CamelsbackandForth

November The Dozenth

2011-11-14T19:34:00.001-05:00

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: 11/12/2011

Originally aired on WRIR 97.3 FM Richmond

Podcast: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/55765

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Pink Floyd- Up The Khyber

Melomane- Dreams of Ships and Lightning

Taxi To The Ocean- Flag On The Moon

Tadpoles- Race To The Mustard Patch

Oingo Boingo- Run Away

Stranglers- Toiler On The Sea

XTC- Life Is Good In The Greenhouse

Of Montreal- Death Is Not A Parallel Move/Beware Our
Nubile Miscreants

Joan As Policewoman- Kiss The Specifics

Ray Manzarek- Downbound Train

Pink Frost- Who I Belong To

Roxy Music- Would You Believe

Sparks- This Is The Renaissance

Area 27- Driving With The Future Self

Capt. Beefheart- Peaches

Michelle Malone- Teen Lament

Neil Young- Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown

Cat Dail- Future Fridays

Steve Hillage- Sea Nature

HuDost- Skeleton Key

Cecile Corbel- Suil a Ruin

The Purrs- Stay With Me

Cardiacs- Leader of the Starry Skies

Jeannine Hebb- I Believe

The Fierce and the Dead- 10'X 10'

Flinging

2011-11-09T21:52:00.001-05:00

Where did my human go? Throwing shit isn't fun without a target.

It has been a while since I blogged and there's a good reason for that. Well two reasons, really, but only one of them is good:

1) I'm in love and would rather spend time with my new girlfriend than blog. In hindsight, one clue that I was falling in love with her was my reluctance to blog about our relationship. I find that if you love are to love someone, it is necessary to respect them as well. And if you respect someone, you won't blog the details of that love...and I'm too emotionally intoxicated to think for long about much else. Hence the lack of posting. That's the good reason.

2) The bad reason is an overload of outrage. Have you noticed how bad the news is lately?
I have. There's so much wrong in the world that it is difficult to pick any one topic from the tsunami of horrific headlines streaming across the monitors that fill my life. The inside of my head feels like it is Occupied. I agree with the majority sentiments of the Occupy My Head movement, but it is difficult to sort them out at times. There is a lot of overlap, our problems are not a scattered number of random, isolated ones; what we have are multiple inter-connected system failures at every level. Where to start?

How about piling on Herman Cain? He actually deserves it.

Dude. Paying out quiet settlements for one or more workplace-related sexual harassment incidents will ruin your political hopes in a way that merely being black will not. So quit whining, quit campaigning and go get your inevitable job at Fox now so we can focus on something else.

I'm not a huge fan of Obama, but none of the GOP candidates are worth a fuck and most are barely worth a grope. The next election will be between The Disappointment We Know and the Disaster We Don't. It makes me wonder if we even really NEED a President or Congress at all- why not just have the Chamber of Commerce deliver checks to the Supreme Court and let the SCOTUS write the laws? Nothing would really change operationally, but we'd save billions on election spending and useless politician's salaries and benefits. Plus counting votes costs money and money is in short supply. Freedom ain't free -you can call it an entitlement and we gotta save money somewhere.

'Democracy' is just another corner to cut. Drown the government in the bathtub, put the captains of industry in direct control of the country and the Free Market will eventually liberate us all. Yep. Just wait.

Housekeeping and Peanut Rage

2011-09-30T20:24:00.000-04:00

I meant to update my template or something- I forget exactly what I intended to do- and then I got distracted and kinda forgot that I had a blog and that I'd left it languishing in virtual limbo for weeks.

So what's happened lately with me?

- WRIR 97.3 FM, the radio station that I've been engineering/DJing at since 2005, completed our bi-annual Fund Drive last week and we broke our all-time record, despite lousy economic conditions and the direct competition from our local NPR station's own fund-drive. (We are wholly independent of NPR).

My passion for live music engineering was re-ignited by five excellent sessions- in the course of the fund drive, I engineered a local Gamelan orchestra, a jazz quartet, salsa greats Bio Ritmo, a twangy rock band called Mag Bats and a fast-rising Belgian duo called The Black Box Revelation, two guys who really tore things up- in a good way:

I had my own two shows as well, but I'm not podcasting them as they are full of fund-raising chatter and I'm not into editing audio files at the moment. The show returns to normal tomorrow, never fear. As if...

Hmmm...what else?

Oh yeah...I had been using a couple of internet dating services and going on a lot of nowhere-nothing dates this summer, but I finally gave up on the dating services altogether . I kinda had to give up, because I met a warm, beautiful, intelligent woman who has been very kind and very good to me and I'm more than just a little bit sweet on her. We've gotten to the point where we are planning a vacation together, so I imagine she'd be pretty pissed off if I went on dates with women who aren't her, not that I would do that.

I'm feeling a sense of real-life happiness that is entirely new and wonderful to me and I don't plan on fucking it up. The future looks good with her in it.

I've also been a repeat guest on a internet radio talk show streamed on New Dissident Radio called Breaking Taboo. The show is archived on their site, you can download and listen to all the recordings, not just the ones with me on them. The show's host, the multi-talented Lakota Phillips, also has a new show called Rebel Goddess.

Oh, and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy is pissing me off. There's been considerable media hoopla about the soaring price of peanut butter- the day I first heard this news, I went to my local store and found the store brand of all-natural (ingredients: peanuts, salt) PB was on sale for $2.00 per 16 oz jar. A 5-lb bag of potatoes, on the other hand, cost nine bucks! Both items were more expensive than the low-end ground beef ($1.69/lb in bulk), which says a lot more about ground beef than it does about the Peanut Famine.

Before I forget: Never buy peanut butter that contains any added oil. A peanut is 50% oil by weight and there is no reason to add oil to PB- what food processors do is remove the healthy peanut oil ( which is sold separately as a commodity) and replace it with much cheaper industrial-strength hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. The kind of oils that shorten your lifespan.

Read the label of your average Name Brand PB and ask yourself this: what part of the peanut does hydrogenated cottonseed oil come from?

Furthermore, if you have some extra time and really want to save money, make your own damn peanut butter. Here's how you do it:

-Throw peanuts into a blender or food processor. Add some salt or a touch of honey if you wish.

- Turn the device on.

-Turn it off and stir up the nuts.

-Turn it on again.

Repeat until you have peanut butter, which isn't really 'butter' at all. (It's really peanut paste, for Godzilla's sake!)

- Make someone else clean the blender.

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See ya on the radio!

Don't Make Me Hit You

2011-09-13T21:52:00.000-04:00

It has been a long, long time since I beat the shit out of somebody justbecause they deserved it. In fact, I'm pretty sure the last time was the winterof 8th Grade and that the person was my brother- I had baked a batch ofChristmas cookies for my Grandparents and my dirty rotten bother stolethem and took them to his homeroom class for their Xmas party. When Idiscovered his misdeed, I punched him out as best I could, which really wasn'tvery much of a beating- I was plenty pissed, but he was still my brother and Ididn't really want to harm him, I just wanted him to know that he fucked upwhen he messed with my Grannie treats. He needed a lesson in respect and he gotone, albeit a totally wimpy version. I mostly sat on his back and punched hisshoulders, if I recall...anyway.

Why am I telling you this? Because this morning I came as close to gettingin a punch-up as I've been since I quit drinking, and it was all about respect.Or lack thereof.

A few weeks ago I was out on a date (with a woman that I'm still dating) andwhile we were out, we ran into J, the guy who fills the snack machines atmy office. J is a big fat Jamaican who I usually enjoy shooting the shit withwhen he makes his rounds- he's a funny , if a bit obnoxious chap. Which is fine.

He stopped and said hello to me and kept going, which was diplomatic of him.I was on a date after all, and it would have been rude to interrupt us...sofar, so good, right? J is an alright dude, eh?

Well, I saw him this morning for the first time since that chanceencounter and he asked me a very rude 'dude' question. I generally don'tget into that sort of discussion with guys, so I pretended not to hear himuntil he asked me a second time.

"No, nothing like that", I replied tersely. I had overslept andmissed my shave, shower and coffee- I was in no mood for manly trifles.

Then he said something that I really didn't like and won't repeathere.

"Look", I started in on J, "there was a time when I'd have been OK with that. But that was a long time ago and I'm not anout-of-control fucked-up kid anymore. Before any of what you described happens,I want to be sure that I like and respect the other person. And vice versa.That takes time, it isn't a contest or a race, it is a long-term two-wayproject. That isn't what you are talking about. You are just talking aboutmeaningless fuckery."

J looked at me as if I were crazy, and perhaps I am. Ten years ago, I neverwould have imagined that I would be dispensing angry, improvised lectureson the virtues of chivalry to a chauvinistic Jamaican truck driverin the break room of a high-rise office building.

"Women don't want to be respected", J told me.

Then he elaborated on how women really want to be treated. Hisdescription began with "Like pigs..." and got worse with every word.It was unbelievably ugly and it made me want to punch him, but the sad thingis, there are women who do feel that way about themselves- my mother wasone- and J had learned to identify that characteristic in women andto exploit it for his own personal gratification. He was a sexual parasite andproud of it.

"You are turning bright red", observed J.

He was right. I was so angered by his callous display of sexism andand gleeful tales of degradation that I was having what almost amounted to anout-of-body experience. I wasn't exactly sure what my body was going to do- itlooked like I was getting ready to throw a punch at J, which would probablyhave been a big mistake, since he is a full foot taller than myself and outweighsme by at least 120 pounds.

So I walked away and went back to my cubicle to drink coffee and think aboutabusive men and the women that they attract. Abusive men always seem to have atleast one girlfriend and/or wives, so there must be plenty of women with therequisite psychological damage needed to fill those roles. That really sucks.

My new friend is not like that. She's very pretty and of course I'mattracted to that, but it her person-ness that has earned myrespect. Out of that respect , I am not going to blog any details about herexcept for a few positive things that really took me by surprise:

- She's a good mother. That might sound like no big deal to some people, butI find it to be a very attractive trait. That's new to me.

- She'd probably laugh uncontrollably and question my judgement if she wereto read this, but I think she manages her time very well. Thatsays a lot about a person. A lot good.

- She remembered my birthday and is taking me out to celebrate it! Happy!

I spent my last birthday alone in a Fort Lauderdale hotel, stuck on a shittybusiness trip. I just checked my blog from 2009- I don't even mention mybirthday at all, so I'm guessing I didn't do anything that year...in 2008there's a brief , depressed mention but no celebration. I did find a shortstory I wrote- it is a dark piece, but also one of my personal favorites (repostedhere). I'd forgotten about it...I bet I could publish at least two books ifI went back through all my old archives. Later for that. My point is, mybirthday is usually a non-event.

This year is a little different. I'm looking forward to my 45th birthday.Friday I'll be engineering a live studio performance by a small Gamelanorchestra, after which I'll be treated to dinner by a beautiful woman...so thatkinda rocks as far as days go.

Next week is our station's Fund Drive and I'll be engineering a LOT of liveshows as our DJs pull out the stops during our pleading period- we don't haveadvertisers, so werely on listener donations- without them, I wouldn't have been able to airthis fabulous broadcast:

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: 9/10/2011
Originally aired on WRIR-97.3 FM Richmond

Podcast here

Helios Creed- Dimension 5

King Crimson- Prozack Blues (live)

Brian Eno- King's Lead Hat

The Purrs- Feeling Fine

Be Bop Deluxe- Love With The Madman

Stackridge- Marzo Plod

Joni Mitchell- You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)

Captain Beefheart- This Is The Day (live)

Pink Floyd- Pigs on the Wing

Mothers of Invention- Directly From My Heart To You

Angelfish- King Of The World

David Bowie- Beauty and the Beast

The Kinks- Powerman

Funkadelic- Nappy Dugout

The Stranglers- Go Buddy Go

The Tubes- I Was A Punk Before You Were A Punk (live)

Elvis Costello- Stella Hurt

Oingo Boingo- Whole Day Off

Crack The Sky- Skin Deep

Of Montreal- Everything Dissappears (When You Come Around)

Cursive- Making Friends and Acquaintances

Bird York - What Are You Running After?

Cat Dail- Squeeze Your Play

Elu- Beautiful Things

Kalliopi- Summer Is Over

Iron Butterfly- Stamped Ideas

Gong- How To Survive
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Six Years After

2011-09-07T20:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my sixth anniversary of sobriety and I forgot to celebrate it. I did take the day off from work, but that was to go to DMV in order to get my driver's license renewed. It really wasn't that bad of an experience, I enjoy watching people too much to get bored easily and when I finally did get to the counter my vanity got a huge boost. After handing her my license,the matronly attendant did a quick double-take, she looked down at my old photo, then up at the new me, then back and forth again.

"You've lost weight since this was taken", she observed.

"Yep. About sixty pounds", I boasted.

"I...do you mind if I ask you how you did it?"

"Sure", I replied easily, "I quit drinking."

And for me, it is an easy reply. I'm not ashamed to be an alcoholic, I was born that way and there really isn't anything that I can do to change my genetics- but I can take responsibility for my behavior, hence the sobriety. Plus I'm afraid of dying.

Six years and two days ago, I left work early because I didn't feel very good. I'd been nauseous for weeks and it had been impossible for me to keep my beer down long enough to get drunk the previous night. I was too sick to drink but I really, really wanted a drink.

So I drove myself home and found a couple of Natural Ice cans in the 'fridge. I gulped one down, felt a sharp stabbing inside of me, then threw up into the kitchen sink. I looked down at the foamy, bloody mess in the sink and decided that I'd drink the second beer a little slower...at some point, I wandered upstairs and posted the following dreadful poem on this blog:

So much pain.
Barely holding it together.
Not alone.
Not MY pain.
Let's ignore it and hope it goes away.
That'll work.

*snip*

Forget that.
I know I can.
If it's not too late.
Return to maybe.
Return to blender.

Fuck it all.

I don't remember writing that. I do remember that a couple of my friends had recently died of their bad habits and that my Uncle had killed himself, so I have a feeling of where the morbidity was coming from. It has been a long time since I've been able to go back and re-read any of my writing from those days, it is the work of a dying man embracing his own ruinous suicide and being too fucked-up to care about it.

In retrospect, it was pretty clear that I knew I was in trouble but I was having a hard time figuring out what to do about it, so I waited until I was a few minutes from losing the ability to make a decision before I finally made one.

In the end, I decided to pick myself up off the floor and drive myself to a hospital. I'm not up to the task of describing what happened there, suffice it to say that I woke up after a three-day coma and was told that the docs were somewhat surprised that I'd regained consciousness. They expected me to die within 24 hours. I was only 38 years old and I'd done myself in, which kinda sucked. I had expected more, somehow.

Except that I didn't die. After a day or two of not-dying, I was evaluated by some shrinks and pronounced 'sane' enough to be released, albeit against medical advice. I was strongly urged to check myself into a rehab center or at least join Alcoholics Anonymous...I didn't take any of their advice. I had plenty of time to make up my mind while I was in ICU, I knew I wasn't going to drink again and listening to their dire predictions about my relapses and demise only pissed me off.

I'll keep myself sober just so those bastards don't get the last laugh, I thought.

Maybe that was their intent. All I know is that it worked- for me, anyway.

I don't have a secret method or gimmick that miraculously cures alcoholism; I swear to Godzilla that I wish I did have one. If I did, I would share it with my friends and my family and sell it to celebrities- I'd never have to work another goddamned day in my life if I could cure drunks of drinking. Of course, I'd probably be assassinated by agents of the the Liquor Lobby, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

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I Trust My Guitar

2011-09-03T20:48:00.000-04:00

This past Monday I had the pleasure of being a guest on Lakota Phillips' talk program Breaking Taboo, which airs weekly on New Dissident Radio. It was the second time I've been on and I must say I really enjoy it. The free-wheeling, uncensored talk format is a real change of pace from my own freewheeling, barely-censored music show...sometimes I wish that I had a radio talk show of my very own- yeah, like that could ever happen.

Wednesday night I had a dinner date, my third with the same woman. It is more like a slow, meandering walk through a forest than it is a mad race to the finish line...this is a new experience for me. Women sure were a lot easier to figure out back when I only dated alcoholics, but I have a feeling that the slow approach might yield better, longer-lasting results in the long run.

Thursday night I took a look into my larder and saw that I was out of almost everything that could reasonably be considered food...it didn't take me long to figure out that Cheerios and chutney may be alliterative, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they belong in the same bowl, so I headed to the local market, which has been randomly changing the layout of its aisles and contents as they remodel the interior. The milk is...where...there...where...here, whew...the supermarket experience left me simultaneously exhausted and over-stimulated andwhen I finally got home, I realized I had leftover Thai from last night. So I nuked that and by that time it was time for bed.

The office closed early Friday, so I went home and started working on my music show. Then I took a short nap. Then I got up and worked a bit.
Nap.
Work.
Nap.
Work.

This went on until about midnight, at which time I took an eight-hour nap.

I woke up this morning and found that I had no blank CDs to burn my show's music selections to, so I dashed off to store to buy some. When I returned, I noticed that last night I'd saved my show files as 96k mp3s, which is too low-fidelity for radio broadcast. I was forced to re-create all of my segments at the very last second and re-burn them as audio files. As a result, I barely arrived at the station in time for my show.

The show went really well but I was disheartened by the lack of internet listeners- my listenership has been slowly but steadily increasing and today's number was so dismal that at first I thought I was looking at my painfully vanishing 401k and not at our web meter. But the DJ who came in after me told me he'd listened to the stream just a while ago and it was noisy and distorted. Hmmm.

Sure enough, when I got home, my recording was totally ruined by digital noise and distortion.

I'd spent two days on it and *poof*, gone forever...but...but...aha! I still had most of the show saved as individual segments!

I threw them into the old mixing bowl, stirred in a few songs that I'd added on the fly during the broadcast, sprinkled it with some artist-promo program IDs and voila! Instant podcast- by instant, I mean twelve hours of repetitive, carpal-tunneling work, but at least it is done.

Tomorrow, while the rest of you drink beer, eat tasty grilled meats and frolic in the sun with your friends and family, I'll be shopping for a mop and new shower curtain.

Then I'll do housework and later on I'll fix some pasta for dinner.

Long live Rock and Roll.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB SEPT. 3, 2011.

Broadcast every Saturday from 1pm-3pm on WRIR 97.3 FM, Richmond. Podcast here.

Joan As Policewoman- I Was Everyone

Cafebar 401- You Got Something

Michelle Malone- Light of Day

Paula Cole- Road to Death

Sparks- Biology 2

Funkadelic- I Wanna Know

Can- Half Past One

The Tubes- I'm Just A Mess

Patti Smith- The 25th Floor/High On Rebellion

Portishead- Insensible

Massive Attack- Live With Me

HuDost- Glacier

Pinback- AFK

Angelfish- Mummy Can't Drive

Garbage- Driving Lesson

Richard Thompson- MGB GT

Capt. Beefheart- New Electric Ride (Live)

Stackridge- No One Is More Important Than The Earthworm (live)

Mothers of Invention- Oh No/Orange County Lumber Truck

John Cale- Bring It On Up

Jimi Hendrix- Hey Baby (New Sun Rising) live

Chrome- Zombie Warfare

Pere Ubu- Life Stinks

The Kinks- Mountain Girl

Bill Laswell- Assassin

Monday Machines- Ruined Morning (bonus)
I began this re-created broadcast using a very cool program ID that Cary Grace made for my show, so I thought finishing with a very appropriate song that she wrote for me would be a fitting end to it all.

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What Could Go Wrong?

2011-08-30T22:56:00.002-04:00

Godzilla bless you, Daryl Hannah. We need more celebrities to step up and get busted for speaking out against the XL Keystone Pipeline.

The Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry Canadian crude oil across the middle of America, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

What could go wrong? It's just raw crude oil, and the Oil Industry hasn't spilled any oil since, like, forever. I mean, we can be pretty sure that the Big Oil's streak of bad luck is over and nothing bad will ever happen, anywhere along the entire length of the pipeline. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no floods and...

...hey, did you notice this- the line runs very close to Oklahoma City, which , sadly is still remembered as the place where American terrorist Tim McVeigh blew up an office building. My guess is that he'd have picked the pipeline as his target instead, had that been an option.
The Keystone XL pipeline would be a tempting target for anyone with explosives and a serious grudge against America.

The objective is to reduce our dependence on 'foreign' oil, which I guess means America annexed Canada and it didn't make the news or something, because last time I checked, Canada was a foreign country.

I wonder if Saudi Arabia is worried about the competition from the XL line? It would be in their best interest if some wackjob did something horrific to the line. Not that anyone would.

Speaking of Saudi Arabia:

Did you know that they are building solar powerplants in Saudi Arabia? They would rather export the oil than burn it in their own air. Right now the plants are in their first stages, but it is only a matter of time and research until the technology is developed into an advanced enough state to be commercially viable. My totally non-scientific guess would be that it will take decades before 'Green' energy can be produced at massively commercial levels, so the sooner we get started the better.

If America won't lead the way in renewable energy, the Saudis will. Of course, they'll be building nuclear power plants as well, so it isn't as if they Saudis are 'Green', they are just smarter than we are. They'll be powering their luxury resorts with wind farms and solar arrays and exporting their smog to us.When the oil runs out, they'll sell us the technology we should be developing now.

Remember how we finally succeeded in our mission to spread Freedom on Iraq, at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars? Did you know what the newly-Freedomed Iraqis want to do?:

Many of the world's biggest energy companies may have to surrender most of the gas from Iraq's vast southern oilfields to a processing and export project led by Shell, a final draft contract between Baghdad and Europe's biggest company shows.

Under the $17bn gas deal to be ratified by the Iraqi cabinet, Baghdad has pledged to do what it takes to ensure these fields supply the Shell-led Basra Gas Company (BGC) joint venture with all the raw gas and natural gas liquids (LNG) it needs, including for an LNG export plant.

We spilled all that blood and treasure to set up a State that promises to give OUR oil to the damned Europeans. What a bunch of ingrates! Are we gonna have to invade them all over again?

Maybe we should invade Holland instead, Shell is a Dutch company.

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Quaking In My Booths

2011-08-25T20:48:00.003-04:00

The 9th floor of a downtown Richmond office building is a really shitty place to be when an earthquake hits. When ours hit, the building started rocking back and forth crazily, knocking picture frames over and making it really difficult for me to drink coffee without staining my favorite shirt.

So I power-slammed my coffee and jump-started my brain into Super Action Mode, which means that my thoughts at the time went more or less like this :
Fuck. I'm going to die at work. That's one of my worst fucking nightmares, ever, and here it is, getting ready to happen. If I'd called in sick today, I'd be alive tomorrow. This sucks.

I mean, if you are on the 9th floor of a 15 story building, what can you really do? Hiding under the desk isn't going to help much- there's nothing directly over my desk except for a few acoustic tiles and six stories of concrete, steel and glass. The acoustic tiles aren't going to hurt me and my desk isn't going to offer much protection if the building collapses on top of me.

Flee? To where? If another quake hits and the windows break, you really do not want to be on the street below. A few people could fit under the handful of vehicles scattered about, but there's no parking on most of the block and not nearly enough cars for everyone to hide under. But I didn't want to die in the middle of a goddamned archiving project either ,so I stepped out of my windowless office and into the main corridor- everyone was up and moving about, but there wasn't any real panic...until the building suddenly lurched again. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like forever...was it going to stop or was it going to worsen?

It stopped and a quick , not-quite-panicked consensus was reached that we should evacuate the building as if it were a fire drill. We all made it outside to our designated gathering spot but a quick tally showed that my co-worker, an elderly woman that I refer to as 'Grim' because of her humorless adherence to The Rules, was not with us

The Rules are something I openly mock and Grim hates it when I do so, which just encourages me, I can't help it- she once called me a 'scofflaw', which was meant as an insult but actually made my day...anyway, she was missing. I told my boss that Grim was probably standing around in helpless confusion and that someone should go back in and get her.

My Boss looked at me with eyes full of helpless confusion. He obviously didn't want to go. Great.

The tiny force of Security guards were trying get people out and handle the crowd outside, so it was not hard for me to get back in -and by that time most of the people were already outside, so it was relatively easy to run back up the stairs against the small current of evacuees.

Sure enough, Grim was standing in the 9th floor lobby, looking lost and confused.

What do we do?

"You come with me and we take the stairs to get outside."

But it isn't a fire. Are you sure we should evacuate the building?

"No, I'm not. But why don't we go ask the Boss? He's outside on the sidewalk waiting for us."

By the time we got out, the Boss had decided to close the office and send everyone home early, just in case we had another shock or a gas line had broken or something...I still get paid, so I applauded his safety-first attitude and went home to check out Facebook and the web news. Once the initial phone congestion cleared, I got a few calls from friends and from my brother in Chicago- I assured everyone that I was OK and that there wasn't any serious damage here.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Until the next day at work, that is. Twelve of our national offices have been freaking out for almost two weeks trying to comply with a Directive sent out by our National Giant-Ass Boss. After being unable to figure out how to do what they were supposed to do, several of the offices were directed to call me, since I pretty much know how to do everything. I'm not boasting, I just do...it is more curse than blessing, trust me.

Anyway, I went over the Directive and it made no sense to me- I mean, I understood what it said, but not how it applied to what we do- until I read the entire chain of emails FWD'd to me by our client. The very first email contained everything I needed to solve the problem.

So I called the National Big-Ass Boss and was a bit surprised that he answered on the second ring.

"Hi NBAB, this Allan in Richmond."

"What do you want, Allan?", he said icily. (He hates me for reasons too long to explain here.)

"I'm looking at the original email you got from the client and I think I found out why all the offices are so far behind on the Directive you sent them."

Then he had the gall to deny knowing what I was talking about. What email?, he demanded to know. So I gave the time and date stamp, the sending party, the CC'd parties and then read his own response to the initial email back to him. Verbatim.

"Oh. Yes, I remember now. So what is the problem with that?", he asked.

"Well, you didn't read the sender's signature line. If you had, you would have known he works for a different division than the one you sent the Directive to. The Division you sent it to can't comply, they don't handle that line of business at all. And the client deadline is tomorrow."

There was silence on the other end. I could hear veins popping in his forehead but he said nothing.

After a decade or three had passed , he said "thank you for that information" and hung up without a goodbye.

Ten minutes later a new email went out, clarifying which Division was responsible for carrying out the Directive and informing them that the deadline had been extended one week. No one in that Division was aware they even had a deadline or Directive in the first place, so what they were really being told is that they had one week to do two weeks worth of work- with no warning at all.

Shortly after that, I got a call from my Boss, asking me what I did to make the NBAB so angry.

"I told him he's an incompetent dumbass."

"You said that?"

"Well, I phrased it as a passive-aggressive attack disguised as a business call, but yeah, that is pretty much what I said." Then I told him about the mistake I found and conversation I had with the NBAB about that mistake.

"Wow." That's all that he could say. He said it several more times.

"Wow."

Thing is, they can't fire me. I'm the only one who understands what I do and if I'm gone, the client has flat-out stated that the account will be closed - and I was present when the client said it.
They never should have let me hear that because I have a meeting with HQ tomorrow and it is going to be a bit hard for them to discipline me when I have a client who is that strongly on my side.

The bosses keep promising me a promotion and I keep doing the work and I get a nickel here and a dime there but no new title or salary. Really, though why should they pay me more? I'm doing the work for what they are paying now, so why spend more?

Because they have to.

.

2011-08-20T19:59:00.002-04:00

An eventful week for me:

On Monday I had the honor of being a guest on the multi-talented Lakota Phillips' thought-provoking radio program Breaking Taboo on New Dissident Radio. It was great to make a cross-country connection with my fellow new media pioneers. From the NDR site:

Allan Coberly with WRIR 97.3 and America Revealed’s S. Paul Forrest join Lakota for a fast-paced, exciting show that cracks open the dissatisfaction Americans have with leadership in Washington and the current state of the country and the world. Why all the grumbling and no action? The riots in London, what they really reflect, as well as how they relate to similar unrest in America is discussed with some intriguing points that will make you go “hmmmmm.”

Podcast downloads of this show and previous BT episodes are available from the link above.

On Wednesday I engineered and produced a live radio appearance by New Jersey trio Screaming Females- video by Jim Nelson here:

Screaming Females on WRIR from Jim Nelson on Vimeo.

Thursday I stayed up way past my bedtime putting together the playlists below.

Friday I told my boss that I don't make enough money for what they expect, I am very discouraged and am thinking about quitting. Then I went on a second date with a beautiful woman who makes me smile...we had a great dinner and I gave her an autographed copy of The Screaming Females CD.

So.

Right now I have two major unresolved questions:

1) Do I still have a job?

2) Will I ever have a girlfriend again?

But all that had to wait, because this morning I had a four-hour marathon of live radio:

I had the great honor of filling in for Buzzy Lawler on his fantastic Shake Some Action program on WRIR today- mostly 1960's and early 1970's guitar rock. The good kind- the kind they don't make anymore.

SHAKE SOME ACTION-NEW BREAKFAST SNOB EDITION: 8/20/2011

SSA Podcast here.

NBS Podcast here.

Sweet - Daydream

Sweetwater- Motherless Child

Pink Floyd- Point Me At The Sky

Flaming Groovies- Love Have Mercy

Humble Pie- Shaky Jake

Manfred Mann- My Name's Jack

Ten Years After- Sugar The Road

Taj Mahal- Take A Giant Step

Everly Brothers- Love Is Strange

Alex Chilton- With A Girl Like You

Small Faces- Sha La La Lee

Great Society- White Rabbit

Cat Stevens- I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun
Once and future Stinky Hippie Cat Stevens gleefully singing about going on a homicidal shooting spree , cheerfully exacting revenge on everyone who ever called him a Stinking Hippie. Seriously, even I couldn't make that up.

The Troggs- I Can't Control Myself

The Scorpions -Greensleeves
This is not the 1970's Scorpions, this is an entirely different band. I got yer other Scorpions on the next show...see below.

Gun- Race With The Devil

Neil Young -Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Fairport Convention- Chelsea Morning

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers- All Your Love

Rare Earth- Share Your Love

Edwinn Starr- 25 Miles
I got a caller during this show who informed me that this song was the very first 45rpm record he ever bought as a kid. It made me happy to hear that.

Wilson Pickett- Don't Fight it (Feel it)

Captain Beefheart- Here I Am

Atomic Rooster- Play The Game

Electric Sandwich- Devil's Dream

Fleetwood Mac- Heartbeat Like A Hammer

Jimi Hendrix- We Gotta Live Together

Emerson, Lake and Palmer- Are You Ready, Eddie?

Spirit- Morning Will Come

Electric Flag- Make Your Move

Funkadelic- Standing On The Verge of Getting It On

So, OK. That was one show down. Things were rolling merrily along until suddenly disaster struck- our webstream went down and I could not coax it back to life. WRIR was reduced to a mere broadcast radio station...but rather than skip a week of podcasting, I went home , used my under-appreciated telepathic powers to painstakingly re-create nearly the entire damn show by hand and then I uploaded the simulacrum in lieu of a recording of the actual program.

Why do I do this? Well...because...um...yeah. Or not.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 8/20/2011: Telepathic Upload Edition

Jeff Beck- Roy's Toy

Brian Eno- No One Receiving

Klaus Schulze- Weird Caravan

Caravan- Be Alright

David Bowie- Sons of The Silent Age

Jennings- Surrender

Lost In The Trees- Song For The Painter

Mavis Staples- You're Not Alone

Bird York- Punish Me With Kisses

Area 27- Wild Card

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- Messin'

Adriana Kaegi- When The Money Runs Out

The Kinks- Money and Corruption

Joan As Policewoman- Chemmie

Michelle Malone and Band du Soliel- Sitting In The Sun

Paula Cole - Hitler's Brothers

Norine Braun- Hanna To Hollywood

Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood- Some Velvet Morning

Kalliopi- Summer's Almost Over

Fruup- Prince of Darkness

Can- Full Moon On The Highway

Scorpions- Fly People Fly
This is by (the) Scorpions that you have heard of.

Ray Manzarek- The Golden Scarab
Ray, along with Jim Morrison, was in The Doors. To my knowledge, Morrison never mentioned dung beetles in his lyrics...Ray does mention dung beetles in this tune. That might be why I almost never play The Doors but play Ray quite often. Or maybe I have other reasons.

Astronauts of Antiquity- Strangest Places

-----

One of these days, I'll actually do something...

.

Sonics and Tonics

2011-08-13T21:11:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I have dreams in which I still have a full head of hair. I call these dreams 'nightmares' because my life used to suck back in the days when I had hair. I've been shaving my head for nearly six years and my life has almost completely turned around since I stopped using shampoo.

I've had a weekly music program on our local non-profit radio station WRIR 97.3 FM for over five years now, but next Monday (8/15/11, 7PM EST) will mark a radio first for me: I'll be a guest on another host's program: Breaking Taboo, a weekly discussion program hosted by the redoubtable Lakota Phillips on New Dissident Radio.

From the BT website:

"Breaking Taboo is hosted by artist, writer, and erotic muse Lakota Phillips who kidnaps her guests from around the country, ties them up using only the softest shibari ropes, and forces them to explore our societal myths, stereotypes, art, sex, and taboos; but not necessarily in that order or all on the same show. She’s considerate like that. The show delivers a huge dose of humor mixed with controversy on Pandora topics your mother never wanted you to know about."

Along with S. Paul Forrest of America Revealed, we'll discuss the London riots and America's own dissatisfaction with our own government- are we unable to change our government or are we merely unwilling to even try? That topic and 'all manner of other controversy' @4pmPST, 7pm EST. Listen live here.

Wednesday 8/17/11 @7pm, I'll be producing a live in-studio performance by The Screaming Females, a hot trio from NJ who'll be appearing on Mike Rutz's WRIR Activate! show , giving us a preview of their 8/18 BFD show at Richmond's Bike Lot.

Friday night I have a second date...I think maybe, just maybe, we might sorta kinda like each other a little bit. It is really soon but I am optimistic. And charmed.

Next Saturday I'll be guest-hosting Buzzy Lawler's Shake Some Action program at 11am and continuing on through my own show beginning at 1pm and running until 3, which means four consecutive hours of live radio. Bring it on!

_______________________________

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 8/13/2011

Podcast:http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/53727

Goldfrapp- Crystalline Green

Gong- Gris Gris Girl

Liars- Scissor

Funkadelic- Some More

Mothers of Invention- San Berdino

King Crimson- Cat Food

Green Man- Do Bheatha 'Bhaile

Aphrodesia- Ayala

Steve Hillage- Electrick Gypsies

Ashlee Rose- Devil's Town

Cafebar 401- Blame the Villian

Amy Winehouse- Stronger Than Me

Joan As Policewoman- The Magic

Joni Mitchell- In France They Kiss On Main Street

Michelle Malone & Band du Soliel- Woman on the Floor

Richard Thompson- Crash The Party

mr. Gnome- Bit of Tongue

Adriana Kaegi- It Feels Like

Paula Cole- Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

Sparks- Talent Is An Asset

Ray Manzarek- Boiling Rage

The Purrs- Big Black Wall

Bardo Pond- Wank

Deluka- OMFG

I'll be catching my breath now...a pizza may be called for. Literally.

The E=MC5²

2011-08-13T11:14:00.001-04:00

Do you remember the days when you could get 10 free record albums just by writing a fake name on a Columbia House Record Club coupon and dropping it in a mailbox?

The card gave a few choices of favorite musical styles. If I recall, I think the list was pretty limited, the choices being more or less : Rock, Soft Rock, Classical, Jazz, Country, Pop, R&B and maybe Disco, since this was the 1970's after all.

You pretty much had to go with plain-old 'Rock' back then. 'Soft Rock' would get you laughed at by your friends- they were way too cool to admit that they liked The Carpenters as much as you did.
Today is different. I'm a DJ and I'm almost terrified to discuss genre for fear of seeming completely clueless. There are more genres than there are bands- and there are a LOT of bands!

Me: What kind of music do you play?

Coolster: Oh, it is combination of emo, crust-core, mixtape, shoe-gaze, twee metal and new rock, but with lots of ambient darkwave 8-bit alt-folk elements, and of course, some spoken-word psyche-salsa beat breaks.

And then they'll play a song and it'll sound a lot like an old 1980's Casio playing the same beat over and over while a couple male voices yip and yap in the foreground and amplified guitars fall over and break in the background. And when I ask the Coolster how they got the neat guitar sound, he'll tell me it was sampled from some old record he stole from his Dad...he thinks it was called Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Some old dude he'd heard about somewhere.

Aaargh. Don't kids today know anything about musical history?

I bet none of them remember prototypical Math-OCD band, The E=MC5².

Formed at MIT in the late 1960's The E=MC5² was comprised of a rotating cast of students and professors who understood that all music is somehow math-based, even if the math is sometimes a bit faulty. They also took a lot of acid and talked far too much while they were tripping, and before long, a now-unknown 'core' group found themselves undertaking the daunting task of converting the numerical value of pi to music.

The band spent their formative years in an abandoned schoolhouse, surrounded by chalkboards, cheap guitar amps, lava lamps and blacklight posters; members would drop in and out as academic arguments, exhaustion, intellectual misadventures and heavy drug use took their respective tolls, but according to legend they persevered through all obstacles: switching to acoustic instruments during blackouts, changing locales as as the authorities chased them from one condemned building to another, a haggard, bearded and discredited physics professor slapping a bongo in 3.14 time while zealous students chanted numerical litanies in order to keep the song going until a new venue could be found.

The descendents of the original members are still playing , currently doing the latest in a decades-long series of farewell tours. As of this writing, the The E=MC5² hold the unofficial World Record for the longest continuously performed musical composition of all time, with their trademark opus 'Pi-Eyed' clocking in at an amazing 38 years, 6 months, 10 days, 11 hours and 12 minutes. Thirteen minutes now, since they are still playing!

Today's show will be a tribute to the madness that is the The E=MC5²: We'll hear a carefully selected two-hour excerpt from the decade-spanning classic 'Pi-Eyed' , including a fabulous moment in 2008 when the late Captain Beefheart came out of his hermit-like retirement to sing a nine-hour duet with Amy Winehouse, who wasn't dead yet. Legend has it that Canadian rockers Rush are playing the background musical parts of this segment, but everyone present was either senile, wasted or currently dead, so no one will ever know for sure. A wayward guitar solo was once credited to Eric Clapton, but upon being asked, he quickly assigned the blame to George Harrison, who had been dead for years at the time.

With some luck, there might be time to play some other songs, but you'll have to tune in to find out, won't you?

WRIR 97.3 FM...the fun starts at 1PM 8/13/2011.

Is My Moral Code Written In Invisible Ink?

2011-08-11T21:43:00.002-04:00

I have often heard alcoholics talk about how their lives became "unmanageable" when they drank, which is something that I , as an alcoholic myself, do not really fully understand.

For me, the more I drank, the more 'manageable' my life became. Booze made all my decisions for me- except the ones the State made- and I pretty much knew what the goal of each day was- a blackout drunken fog. But that is a shitty goal and it'll kill you sooner than later. Unless you are lucky like me and don't stay dead.

Sober is easy. I'm not at all tempted to drink, no matter how rotten things become. Not drinking is the easy part, it is what to do with all the sober time that gets tricky.

Take women , for example. Alcohol used to pick my girlfriends for me, and in hindsight it didn't do such a good job on giving me girlfriend-picking lessons. Some I had to learn on my own.

1) After a certain age, sex on the first date is not a good idea. I'm not saying it can't work, but personally I'd advise against it. Nothing lasting has ever started that way for me and the older I get, the more that I want things to last.

2) If your date agrees to a second date and then changes her mind- and then changes it again- things probably aren't gonna work out.

3) Don't date multiple women on the same weekend, even if they are just casual meets. It is too difficult to focus and you'll just wind up massively confused, poorer and still single. Plus, you are kind of an old-fashioned romantic monogamist at heart...yeah, say whatever you want, but I know what's in yer head, buddy.

4) Don't expect a second date, period. Don't be mad, it just works that way.

5) If you meet someone you really like and you wind up talking while the restaurant closes around you, and that person is genuinely interested in seeing you again, then you should:

6) Cancel your date(s) with other women- honestly and as politely you can - and see how things work out with #5 above first . You obviously like her. She made you laugh out loud, in public. Dude, you never laugh out loud. I bet you'd dance in front of people if she asked you to- go on, admit it. You would. I knew it.
I mean, you told her how you single-handedly ruined your Senior class high school Baccalaureate and she laughed with anarchistic glee. That is a good sign.

7) Seriously, if your biggest problem is trying to figure out how to cancel dates with attractive women without hurting their feelings, then maybe your problems aren't such problems after all.
Maybe you've actually got it pretty fucking good. She might even like you. If she does, you should be giving life a grateful A+ instead of complaining all the time and convincing yourself that no one likes you. Dumbass.

8) And if it doesn't work out, it really isn't that hard to get another date, is it? You just cancelled two, didn't you? It's a big desperate world and not many people really want to face it alone, and really, no one should have to. You met plenty of pretty, perfectly nice and intelligent women, but face it dude, you are a little bit weird. Not every woman is going to understand you. (You aren't going to understand any of them, but that is normal, don't be alarmed)

--------------

So I just did 5 and 6 above. I hope it doesn't get to 8 again, but I've been there before and it wasn't fatal, it only felt that way.

I hope I did the right thing. A lot of guys would probably be able to pull off two or three dates in a weekend...I have a female penpal friend (that I met on a date) and she will sometimes have two dates in a day...not for sex or anything, but still...that would be stressful to me.

I'm not good enough with names for that, for one thing.

Well.

.

A Head Full of Quandry and a Mighty, Mighty Thirst

2011-08-06T18:29:00.000-04:00

I love my radio friends

There are many ways to cope with the lingering spectre of depression. One way would to stay up all night listening to six billion songs in a single evening, imagining to oneself how the songs will fit together,for example: how will the end of this Bird York song fade into the beginning of this Joan Wasser tune?

Pretty damn well, it turns out. If you don't believe me, download the podcast and hear for yourself. If you do believe me, download the podcast and enjoy it.

What I'm trying to say here is: download the podcast.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: AUG. 6th 2011
(Originally aired on WRIR 97.3 FM. )

The Kinks- Preservation (Single)
This is a nearly-unknown Kinks track...a very un-Kinks-like groove rocker with very Kinks-y timeless lyrics.

Booker T. Jones- Progress
You can get the awesome compilation CD that this soulful tune is taken from here, for FREE.

Joni Mitchell- Don't Interrupt The Sorrow
Ah, Joni. This song is nothing short of brilliant. The title of this post is taken from it.

Bird York- Bought A Gun
"By the time I'm eleven, I'll be a man"

Joan As Policewoman- Nervous
Had a couple callers on this one, they loved it and they should, it is awesome...I have been a huge Joan Wasser fan for years...why is she not totally fucking famous yet?

Sparks- I Can't Believe That You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song
"And only you and only you, my love"

Of Montreal- An Eluadarian Instance
This band is better than a million circuses.

Kalliopi- Summer Is Over
She's from Greece. Things are tough in Greece right now, hopefully there's some solace in music.

Nouvelle Vague- Making Plans For Nigel
XTC cover.

Tom Waits- Make It Rain
"Sharpen my knives on my mistakes"

Amy Winehouse- Fuck-Me Pumps
Add Amy to my list of unattainable post-mortem crushes; Voltairine DeCleyre, Clara Bow, and Amy Winehouse.

Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald- Frim Fram Sauce
Oooo tasty.

Rare Earth- Is Your Teacher Cool?
Depends on the lesson.

The Stranglers- The Sweet Smell of Success

Funkadelic- Funky Dollar Bill

Jimi Hendrix- Message of Love

Miles Davis- Spanish Key (single edit)

Michelle Malone and Band du Soliel- Cortez the Killer
Awesome live cover of classic Neil Young song...Michelle Malone is the real rocking deal.

Jennings- Surrender
New album coming soon!

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- Cloudy Eyes

Atomic Rooster- Devil's Answer

Roxy Music- Three and Nine

John Cale- Taking It All Away

Brian Eno- The True Wheel

David Bowie- Blackout
Man, this song is about best thing that ever happened to my ears, ever.

Astronauts of Antiquity- Breakthrough

Misty Boyce- Be A Man
I like the way the title of this song doesn't say what you probably think it does...but if she was a man, she couldn't sing like she does. And that would be a bummer, 'cause she sings great.

How To Listen To The Radio In 2011

2011-07-31T14:32:00.004-04:00

Podcast here...

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB JULY 30 2011

Sparks- Intro/I've Never Been High

Amy Winehouse- Amy, Amy, Amy

Edwinn Starr- Who Cares If You Are Happy Or Not? (I Do)

F&M- Another Closing Number

Jennings- Surrender

Gong- Digital Girl

Steve Hillage- Searching for the Spark

Goldfrapp- Strict Machine

Bird York- Prozac Day

Area 27- Human Alien

Hawkwind- To Love A Machine

Pink Floyd - Summer '68

Jimi Hendrix- Sunshine of Your Love

The Fierce and the Dead- 10'x 10'

Jeff Beck- Loose Cannon

Green Man- Cold Blows The Wind

Clannad- Battles

Rare Earth- When I Write

Funkadelic- Super Stupid

Hot Tuna- Extrication Love Song

Joan as Policewoman- Furious

The Whispering Tree- So Many Things

Stefanie Seskin- Your Own Road

Misty Boyce- Razor

Garbage- #1 Crush

John Cale- Heartbreak Hotel

HuDost- Salome

How Failure Saved My Life

2011-07-29T15:55:00.002-04:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never paid any real notice to Amy Winehouse before her death. The first time I saw her image was in a series of caricature sketches that a long-ago penpal sent me, the drawings were of rock stars and I identified most of them but couldn't place Winehouse. Is that what's-her-name from the B-52s?

My friend was surprised that I'd never heard of Amy Winehouse, after all she was all over the press back then. Not for her singing, but for her personal life, such as it was.

So anyway, I listened to her music last week after my show. And I found that she was really, really good. At least for two CDs...two CDs doesn't exactly qualify one for Hendrix comparisons, not musically anyway, but the songs are good and her voice is amazing. I had expected some sort of electro-techno-disco glop, not soulful, heartbreaking and sometimes funny songs, songs largely played with real instruments. There was a lot of potential there.

I hate the tabloid media and the way they emphasize all the wrong aspects of an artist. I don't give a damn how much weight some actress that I've never heard of has gained or what kind of drunken voicemails some Hollywood clown leaves on some other Hollywood clown's phone.

Even things that I would normally enjoy-such as swimsuit photos of beautiful women- are ruined by bright red circles and highlights that point out the 'imperfections' on human bodies that any sane person would consider to be natural wonders:

Omigod, is that a wrinkle on Suzy Creamcheese's face? Are her boobs sagging? Is that a trace of cellulite? Get her to a plastic surgeon before it is too late!

Can you imagine a young Joni Mitchell being transported through time and marketed by a team of 2011-era Hollywood producers?

(still alive and fine)

Well, we'd better do something about that hair. Maybe we can salvage it...we'll need to add some weight in the right places too, maybe raise the cheekbones just a tad, they are not-terrible...lose the nerdy clothes and start showing some skin, at least once the cosmetic scars heal...oh, and try playing something you can dance to, maybe guitar stuff that isn't so complicated, be more like Lenny Kravitz and less like Django Reinhardt, right? ...and stop using so many words- I mean, can't you just find a hook and stick with it? Our producers will be handling the songwriting from now on, ok?

No one will be able to see your new tits with that guitar in the way, so we'll find someone to do that for you too, or maybe we'll get your stylist to design a transparent guitar you can wear like a bra...now go meet your personal trainer and start toning those skinny legs so's you can learn some moves fer your video...

Whomever said: "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" was a fucking idiot. If your fast-living kills you while you are still young, your corpse is not going to be a beautiful work of art- it is going to be a mortis-sculpture that requires a HazMat team to clean up. Seriously.

Because chances are you've played with needles or slept with someone who has, and that makes your blood an upgraded potential biological hazard. And there's probably going to be a lot of blood when they find you. You would be unpleasantly surprised at the number of orifices that can bleed simultaneously. I sure was surprised when my time came.

So forget about the glamor of an early death brought on by a hard life. There isn't any glamor in being found dead in a congealing pool of your own blood, vomit, shit and piss. Fabulous!

There isn't any way that I can judge her strength of character or know if Winehouse really wanted to quit using or not but I will give her the benefit of the doubt. I have been there myself and I know how hard it is. It takes a long time- a lifetime- to adjust to sobriety and the first attempt doesn't always work. I know.

But what I can't know is what it would have been like to try to get clean if I had left the hospital and suddenly found out that I was rich and famous. That every detail of my life- real or fabricated- was uploaded to the internet in real-time as it occurred and viewed with obsessive fascination by people who really should have better things to do with their time.

And that I had piles of money and plenty of new 'friends' willing to help me spend it.

I have a very talented friend who desperately wanted to be a rock star when she was younger but never quite achieved that dream. This was a source of pain for her, but it shouldn't be, because if she'd become famous back then, she'd be dead by now and that would suck. I understand the desire to attain immortality through art, but the 'immortality' once granted to artists just isn't what it used to be. Most 'celebs' don't even seem to get 15 minutes of artistic recognition, their "fame" is all about their personal lives, not their art; they are lucky to get a few hits, 140 characters of obituary and a Tiny URL for a tombstone.

I wanted the same fame for myself as my friend wanted, of course. I was sure that I'd be a rock star by 21 and dead by 30 and at the time I saw this as some sort of transcendental, darkly poetic and tragically beautiful fate. Lucky for me, I was a failure as a rock star, because I was a hugely successful addict and if I'd had a trainload of cash and a retinue of vampires for friends to go with that success, I'm sure I'd be dead now.

It seems as if the public does not care about talent or skill , it is all about gory spectacle and prurient distractions..one person's escapism becomes that person's nightmare addiction and then that person's nightmare addiction becomes the escapism of millions . Vicious.

I think the gossip media must appeal to the same dark, reptilian part of the human psyche that the ancient Romans tapped into when they forced slaves to fight to the death for the public amusement of a privileged audience. At least the ancient Roman had to show up and watch the death in-person and physically give the 'thumb up or down' life-or-death gesture. Today we have the 'like' button with "lols" and 'smiley' emoticons to help add a passive-aggressive veneer of plausible deniability to our otherwise murderous statements. Fuck off :) lol :)

But is being successful a good thing? Especially in the context of addiction? It seems like only yesterday that the nation was transfixed by Charlie Sheen tweets and rants. For me, the most immediate benefit that I realized when I quit using cocaine was not having to listen to crazy-ass cokehead bullshit anymore...many years later, people were actually paying money to listen to crazy-ass cokehead bullshit. Unreal.

Let's look at other forms of popular entertainment from the not-so-distant-past.

Death and torture:

Obviously, human beings have a perversely morbid fascination with watching other human beings suffer and die. Crucifixions, lynchings, hangings, beheadings...these are all huge crowdpleasers. Do you think humans have changed much since the photograph above was taken?

Think again.

The only difference is now we can watch people destroy themselves and others from the safety of our own carefully filtered custom-aggregated electronic cocoons. We don't need to be physically present to extend our condemnation of others, we can do it anonymously with the click of a single button or a snarky text shortcut. We have violent videogames and movies like the 'Saw' series and Mel Gibson's S&M Jesus movie to satiate our bloodlust and morbid fantasies. It is only a matter of time until someone does a 'Faces of Death' reality TV series.
(If they haven't already).

Ultimately, it is up to the addict to quit. I know this because I have done it, alone and without any formal support system. But I don't know that I could have done it if I'd been famous. I don't think I'd have survived my success.

But I was lucky. The only misery that I was addicted to was my own and my suffering wasn't public enough to be called 'entertainment'. I never made the Big Time but at least I lived to talk about not making it.

That's more than Amy got. She got success instead.

.

Catching Up, Going Out

2011-07-23T17:45:00.000-04:00

Things have been a bit hectic but the show must go on - and so must the podcast of the show.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have been invited to dinner by one of my recent coffee dates and I need to make myself presentable...that should take at least 10 minutes.

PODCAST OF 7/16/2011 SHOW

PODCAST OF 7/23/2011 SHOW

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 7/16/2011

Rathkeltair- All About You

Jethro Tull- The Valley

Apache O'Raspi- Hostal Simplex

Frank Zappa- Stinkfoot

The Whispering Tree- So Many Things

Misty Boyce- Be A Man

Cranberries- Zombie

Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield-Stop

Hot Tuna- Baby, What You Want Me To Do?

Good Rats- Reason To Kill

DOTMIG- Going To The Top

Israel Darling- Brilliant Plan

Triumvirat- The Walls of Freedom

Renaissance- Kiev

Area 27- Stereofab

NEU!- Isi

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- California Coastline

Sparks- No More Mr. Nice Guys

10CC- Sand In My Face

Beach Boys- Back Home

Taxi To The Ocean- I Live At Home

Crack The Sky- Suspicion

Ozone Player- Orange Apples

Early Bird Collages- Untitled #3

Love Kills Theory- Region of the Worms

Tiger- Suzi Slicker

Traffic- Memories of a Rock and Roller

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 7/23/2011

Danny Kaye- The Maladjusted Jester

Pink Floyd- Echoes pt. 1 (Live)

Crack the Sky- Ice

Pretty Things- Cold Stone

Kalliopi- Fire and Sea

The Fierce and the Dead- Pt. 2

Neil Young- Don't Let It Bring You Down

Papa John Creach- The Janitor Drives a Cadillac

Speck Mountain- Twinlines

Gong- City of Self-Fascination

Billie Holiday- Nice Work If You Can Get It

Andrews Sisters- I Can Dream, Can't I?

Louis Armstrong- Lucky Old Sun

Flaming Groovies- She's Falling Apart

Suzi Quatro- Suicide

Carpenters- Superstar

Jethro Tull- Moths

Katie Lee- Something Psychological

Goldfrapp- Lovely Head

Rare Earth- Hum Along And Dance

Michelle Malone & Band du Soliel -Black River

The Tubes- Mondo Bondage

Hawkwind- Out Here We Are

Be Bop Deluxe- Shine

Stab My Back But Please Don't Shoot Me

2011-07-19T19:51:00.001-04:00

Last year ended with the revelation that someone I loved and trusted had betrayed me, had been betraying me for months in fact, but their betrayal of my trust had kept them quite busy, so there hadn't been time to inform me of it until well after it was underway.

I couldn't understand it. I was emotionally amputated, damaged and reduced to rubble; there was a crater in my chest where my heart used to live and a family of knives had moved into my spinal neighborhood. I was a mess and it took a long time for me to feel better, but eventually I did. I reached a sort of peace with my lack of understanding, and concluded that things just are. Deal with it, move on.

Much later, a casual slip of this person's tongue revealed the entirety of their plan to me- all five years of it- and suddenly it all made sense. What I had been led to believe would happen was never actually supposed to happen, it was all part of a larger plan. I found it unethical and unsavory, but wholly understandable and I honestly can say that at one point in my life I might have done pretty much the same thing, had I had the chance.
The person who betrayed me is considerably younger than myself and values sometimes change, so hey...whatever. I don't agree with what they did, but it is very logical and to their advantage.

One confidante who is privy to the details of the tale used the word 'evil' in his assessment, but I disagree with him.

Unethical, yes. Evil? No, I don't think so. I've partied with murderers and worse and my former friend is not like those people at all, not in spirit or in deed.

Nevertheless, they did betray me and as a result,someone who once filled my heart and soul is now just an internet buddy that I exchange greetings with when we bump into each other on-line. The anger is gone, but so is the trust and without trust, I don't feel like putting much effort into the friendship.

But this really isn't about that situation, I just used it to illustrate how I feel about betrayal.

You see, I consider our receptionist at work to be a close friend. This is a strictly on-the-job friendship and could never really be more that that, but we have developed a very close personal rapport that makes my job that much easier to deal with and I think she feels the same way.

So it bothered me a few weeks ago when she asked me if I had left a note on her desk and would I mind taking a look at it? Sure.

It was partially typed and partially hand-written in what looked like deliberately messy handwriting...handwriting that resembled my own sloppy scribbling. The message itself was cryptic and work-specific, it would make no sense to anyone not working in our line of work, but it wasn't profane or sexual- it was accusatory and unsigned. This stirred up a cloud of suspicion over almost everyone, my co-worker Dan said it looked like my handwriting...I volunteered a handwriting sample and was cleared, but still...who left the note, and why?

Meanwhile, my friend Dan has been slipping at work for sometime. Yesterday a Big Boss from HQ came down to speak with him and he called out sick, which really, really pissed her off. So she went around the office asking about him- among the things she learned about Dan:

-He told a short , elderly customer that he did not like her and would not help her. He was apparently slapping the palm of his hand with the backside of his other hand while he said this. The customer was, and is, terrified of him.

-He has told several people that he likes to drink , heavily and alone.

-After receiving many complaints about his lack of customer service, he wrote back to a lower boss calling it "bullshit" and asking why he has to deal with people who keep entering his workspace. He works in the copy room, it is open to anyone in the office and his job is help them...he called this "bullshit" in an email. To a manager.

-He spends almost all of his workday browsing the internet.

-He looks almost exclusively at websites devoted to handguns and ammunition. He is not at all shy about his browsing habits, it is not unusual to walk into the copy room and see pictures of automatic pistols or on-line ammo catalogs displayed on his monitor. Hours and hours spent staring at gun porn on the job...it has made more than a few people nervous, myself included.

-He told the receptionist that he recently purchased two guns.

- His Sunday Facebook post mentions buying ammunition at a local sporting goods shop.

The kicker is the video camera footage. It revealed Dan as the one who left the nasty, disruptive note a few weeks back. He tried to set me up.

Why? What was he trying to achieve? And why was he so quick to point the finger at me?

You see, I used to work with Dan at another job and I considered him a friend. In fact, I was the one who got him the job that he has lost as of today. They finally-finally- fired him. He won't be back on the job, not unless he decides to come back and start shooting people. Which is not beyond the realm of possibility.

And questions remain. Why has he been so bizarre lately, obsessed with guns and claiming that he likes to drink- a lot and alone...why did he leave that crazy note and why blame me?

I'm not afraid of him physically but he owns two guns, has some sort of unreasonable anger against almost everyone and he knows where I live.

I got him a job in a time of record unemployment and he betrays me by trying to frame me for his misdeed and then doing such a lousy job that I felt compelled to apologize for recommending him in the first place. That was humiliating, I vouched for him and he was a total fuck-up.

The whole thing makes me feel crazy. Why do I suddenly have an enemy? We've never had angry words or any real differences at all, yet he tried to get me fired. Why?

Why?

The Trick Is To Be Smarter Than The Yogurt

2011-07-14T21:16:00.001-04:00

My company recently sent out the first issue of our 'official' in-company newsletter. The lead stories are a really, really long joke about a dog ("Doggone Funny") and a manager's secret recipe for meatballs.

There is another food article, it links to some suggested recipes, including this one:

'Yogurt and Fruit Dessert Cup'

The ingredients, pasted directly from the recipe site:

1 single-serve cup fruit flavored custard style low fat yogurt
1/4 cup granola or Grape Nuts
1 cup cut fruit from in store service deli

There are instructions posted there as well, but really, you should be able to look at the ingredients and be able to figure the rest out on your own.

I pointed this 'recipe' out to an older and somewhat humorless co-worker named Grim. I made my observation in my typically genteel fashion:

"You know, you'd have to be completely stupid to need a recipe for 'Yogurt Fruit Cup'. They must think we're idiots."

She gave me a hateful glare.

"Not everyone knows how to cook. Some of us need recipes. I wouldn't know how to make a 'Yogurt Fruit Cup' on my own", she said tersely.

"Seriously? It is like needing a recipe for Cheerios and strawberries."

"Well, Mr. Know-it-All, what is the recipe for Cheerios and strawberries?", she said, throwing down the gauntlet.

"You take a bowl and fill it most of the way up with Cheerios. Then you add some strawberries and pour milk over it all", I said, picking up the glove.

"You can't just throw food willy-nilly into a bowl and hope that things will work out OK."

"Well, actually with breakfast cereal and fruit, you pretty much can just throw it together and count on it working out. I could ask the guys in Risk Modeling to graph it out for us, but I'm pretty sure it's a low-risk venture."

"But what if you put in too much milk? Or not enough strawberries? And how much exactly is a 'mostly full' bowl?"

I stopped for a minute, thinking she was making some sort of ironic or allegorical point. Grim is rather linear in her thinking, abstractions and symbolism are not her strong suite. Alphanumeric filing is her specialty and she is really, really good at it. But I'm guessing you don't want to have dinner at Grim's house.

"You are telling me that you need a recipe for cereal?"

"Yes. I'm telling you that lots of people need recipes for cereal, not everyone can just cook without instructions."

"But-but," I stammered perplexedly, "mixing yogurt with fruit isn't cooking. It's yogurt. And fruit."

"Well, not everyone can know that."

"Why not?"

"Well, where did you learn how to cook?", she asked me.

"Restaurants and home."

"Well, not everyone is lucky enough to have worked in a restaurant kitchen", commented Grim.

Lucky enough to work in a kitchen? That would be an absolutely hilarious statement had it been made in jest. But you are serious, aren't you? You can't work Cheerios. You have a college degree and you can't work Cheerios without a manual?

I didn't mean to say that out loud but I think I must have , because Grim turned a little red after that and after a while my boss called and said maybe I should take the rest of the day off.

So I came home and had some cereal, milk and blueberries, mixed together in reckless, joyous and wholly unmeasured abandon. I felt like a mad wizard tempting the very gods themselves as I carelessly splashed milk into the fruity mixture. I even forgot to check the expiration date on the milk and I willfully neglected to check the temperature of the refrigerator- such a scofflaw I am.

But I have to wonder. Grim is a grandmother, she has raised several kids- how can you have kids and not understand how cereal works? She is very precise and 'rules-oriented' at work,but maybe it was worse at home. Perhaps each meal was prepared by meticulously following a recipe, that Grim is simply incapable of any sort of improvisational cooking at all.

I also wonder what percentage of Americans would starve to death if they were locked in a room for a 45 days with nothing but a fully equipped kitchen, water, fifty pounds of dry rice, fifty pounds of dry beans, a few pounds of butter, some basic spices and a tank full of live lobsters?

Would you survive?

Don't Let Them Grind You Down

2011-07-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

Bummer.

What the hell is wrong with all the men I meet, you think.

Why can't I meet a guy who isn't a total creep? Someone that I'm not ashamed to be seen in public with? The last guy called me the wrong name three times in a row and then invited me to his motel room for christ's sake. Is it me?

Nah. It's not you. You're fine. The problem is me.

You haven't met me yet- that's the problem.

See ya soon.

----
THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 7-9-2011
(originally aired on WRIR 97.3 FM)

Podcast: Here.

Sparks- Fletcher Honorama

Hot Tuna- Easy Now

Jethro Tull- Singing All Day

Ray Manzarek- Begin the World Again

Lou Reed- Oooh Baby

Roy Harper- Cherishing The Lonesome

Taxi To The Ocean- Simple Mood

Jean-Luc Ponty- Cosmic Messenger

The Tubes- Haloes

The Kinks- Sleepwalker

Phil Manzanera- Big Day

Niav- Money Gods

Jeannine Hebb- Just Enough For Me

Fleetwood Mac- For Your Love

The Band- Where Do We Go From Here?

Neil Young- I've Been Waiting For You

Jen Foster- Sunday Drive

KGB- Working For The Children

Melanie- Got My Mojo Workin'

Dresden Dolls- Girl Anachronism

Al Stewart- Constantinople

Area 27- Driving With The Future Self

Astronauts of Antiquity- Beautiful Fate

Electric Prunes- Finders Keepers

Cat Dail- White Chicks in Jamaica

Garbage- The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

Good, Bad and Beyond the Pale

2011-07-03T19:48:00.000-04:00

I'm surprised at how fun and relatively easy my experiment with on-line dating has been lately. Nothing serious yet, just a few casual daytime meetings, ranging from charmingly engaging to slightly awkward,but none of them have been at all unpleasant. I have a strong favorite and I hope it is mutual, but it is far too soon to speculate on such things. I think taking a slower, wider-ranging approach may be the best way to go about finding a mate, but that theory is still hypothetical.

One thing that has been consistent are the tales of male misbehavior that my dates have related to me. There was an eerie sameness to each woman's experiences, it was like listening to totally different witnesses give the same account of a UFO sighting...the first time you hear it, you wonder if it can be true, but then you hear the very similar details again and again and hey, waddy ya know? Men are creepy as fuck.

Dude Advice:

- Don't email pictures of your junk to anyone. Ever

-If a woman turns you down, don't write a nasty and insulting note back, calling her "a stuck-up bitch" and worse. That is not going to change her mind.

- Don't put up old pictures of yourself...like 5, 10 or 15 years old. You don't look like that anymore and as soon as your date sees the "real" you, they'll immediately distrust everything you say.

- Don't invite your date to eat guacamole out of your butt. ( True...she showed me the email.)

- And don't make a website where you post the names, emails and identifying information of the women that you are currently stalking. Not only is that uber-creepy, but it is probably illegal.

I probably shouldn't be giving free advice like that. After all, those guys are the competition.

In any case, I see a lot of potential in the future. The past, on the other hand, has ambushed me in a way that I didn't exactly want to bring up on a first date. And it isn't exactly suited for parties or Facebook either.

Last week, I got a call from an old friend who said he had bad news about a mutual friend, a guy that had been one of my best friends in 12th grade and a member of my first ever band. We had been very close but drifted apart over the years. He had moved away, married and settled down and it all seemed pretty much good with him...until the call.

My first assumption was that my old pal had died, but when I heard what had really happened, I wished that he had died instead.

My dear old friend had been convicted -plead guilty- to at least eleven charges, all of them involving child pornography and the 'grooming' of teen-age boys via internet sex acts. It was an excruciating new article to read and I'm not sharing it here, but there was a full-color mugshot of my old friend, his face bloated, his eyes dead and cold, but still...that was him.

Most things can be forgiven. This has to be so, for if it were otherwise, life itself would become nothing but a constant torment of grudges, resentments and retribution, an endless hell of paybacks and vengeful scorekeeping - but there are some things that I do not believe can ever be forgiven, nor can the people who do those things be rehabilitated or 'cured' from their moral affliction- and child molestation is one of those things. You cross a certain line and you don't come back, ever. You will remain on that side of the line for the rest of your life. Which will be much shorter in prison than outside of it.

He had a choice. He knew that what he was doing was wrong and he did it anyway and in the end a suspicious mother found the evidence that led to his arrest and conviction. I'm glad that particular child had a parent who was paying attention, but not all kids have that luxury.

One of the few happy memories I have out of my own not-so-easy childhood was that of playing in the band with my friend. Everything was new and exciting, punk rock was hot and we were gonna tear the scene up...until we moved apart and years went by and we lost touch. It was only within the last few years that I had re-established contact with him via Facebook.

Now all of those memories have a stain on them, a taint that can't be removed and I have lost another friend forever.

You bastard. You sick, disgusting bastard. How could you do this?

How?

.

Low Pressure

2011-07-02T22:34:00.017-04:00

The future looks pretty bright from where my guitar is sitting but the present keeps pulling the rug out from under me.

Not long ago, I met a woman that I really liked and while my head was still swimming with thoughts of her, I was also saddened by the loss of my long-time friend and party companion Tim M., who had finally lost his battle with cancer.

Obviously, my old friend isn't coming back, but it doesn't seem as if my new friend is going to come back either. And that's OK. I'm saddened and a bit hurt, but life goes on. If anything, I learned a lesson: only date women with stable lives. I keep forgetting that I'm stable and reliable- I was so drunk and generally fucked-up in the head for so many years that it is hard to get out of imagining myself as being any other way. But that is changing-it has to or I'll never be happy.

So my next round of website dates was selected from a very short list of women. Intelligent, very attractive professional women of sound mind, spirit and body. The kind of women who wouldn't give the old me a second glance, much less their phone number. But that was the old me.

I had a great radio show this afternoon and afterwards I went to meet one of the women who had replied to me. She's brilliant, well-educated and funny, she had me laughing and at ease in no time. We had coffee and talked for a couple of hours and have agreed to do it again soon. At the very least,it was a fine way to spend an afternoon.

Tomorrow I have a coffee date with a second woman. She was actually the very first woman that I messaged from the website I was using; she seems to be good at everything. She is a helicopter pilot- I've always wanted to find a date who was willing to go sky-diving with me, but I'm guessing my next date has already done that. I'll have to ask.

I learned something about dating sites today. My date, who is my age (44), told me that most men our age have a 'search range' for their partner's age that usually cuts off a few years before the man's age. For example, a 47-year old man might be looking for a date between the age of 21-44...a 45 year-old man might have 25-42 listed. My own range was 35-50 and my date liked that, apparently very few men my age are willing to date older women. She asked me if I had any insight on why that is:

"Because most men are shallow and don't know how to have a conversation with an intelligent woman their own age."

She agreed.

The guys that won't date women my age are missing out. I love women my own age, they've already got themselves figured out by now and don't really need anyone to "complete" them; that and the importance of a shared historical context can't be over-rated.

I also learned something about myself. My past doesn't matter. Today's date is a psychotherapist by profession, and I wasn't sure how much of my past to reveal, or if to I should tell her I'm actually in therapy at the moment...but we clicked really well and the gist of my story of addiction and brokenness came tumbling out...it wasn't taken as a negative at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. She echoed what my own therapist has told me- there aren't many people like me out there. She knows what a hopeless addict looks like- it is her job to know- and I'm not like that at all, there is no 'profile' for me. I'm OK with that.

Today brought good music and quality company and tomorrow promises to bring more of the same.

Here's the podcast that proves it.

And yeah...I jinxed myself at the beginning of the show and flubbed a whole bunch of talking and generally got my words and facts dsylexicated. Happiness trips me up and makes me clumsy but hopefully I'll get used to it.

The New Breakfast Snob: July 2nd, 2011

Rathkeltair- Spanish Chicken

Elvis Costello- Everyday I Write The Book

Jimi Hendrix- Red House

Spirit- Prelude to Nothing to Hide

Bird York- Had A Dream

Peter Ivers- Pursuit of Treasure

Rare Earth- Hey Big Brother

Family- Second Generation

Liars- Proud Evolution

Shadowfax- New Electric India

Sloe Panda- Skeleton

Genesis- I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)

Area 27- Dancing On The Moon

The Tubes- What Do You Want From Life?

Dresden Dolls- Bad Habits

Triumvirat- The School of Instant Pain

Alice Cooper- Go To Hell

The Who- Heaven and Hell

Carrie Rodriguez- Infinite Night

Jennings- Hero

Ace No Face- Snakes

Arvel Bird- Crow

Crack The Sky- Goodbye Mrs. Nature

Green Man- Dirge

Neil Young - Depression Blues

Traffic - Medicated Goo

.

Baby, You Can Talk To Me

2011-06-25T19:21:00.005-04:00

This week I had two radio shows,filling in for my friend Paul on his Thursday night show, and then doing my own on Saturday. It's been a long, hard week and certain things aren't working out quite the way I'd hoped.

I mean, I know exactly how hard it is to make a phone call. I understand the difficulty of email and I sure as hell grasp the inherent barriers involved in sending a text message from a cell phone. So my guess is that my new friend has been trying desperately to get in touch with me and just hasn't found the right technology for doing so. Maybe all she had was a postage stamp and I'll have to wait for Monday's mail to get her reply to my simple question about this weekend.

Yeah. That's it.

Anyway. I have music and lots of it, and if you want it all you gotta do is come and get it.

DOUBLE BONUS PODCAST DOWNLOAD - TWO SHOWS, FOUR HOURS!(click)

PAUL'S BOUTIQUE 6/23/2011 w/ Guest DJ,THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB

Astronauts of Antiquity- Breakthrough

Melomane- Buddha Statue

Clara Bellino- Peaceful Solution

Frames- Giving It All Away

Old Haunts- Not Hopeless

Gang of Four- You Don't Have To Be Mad

Green Man- When Love is Done

Hudost- Hunger

Obits- You Gotta Lose

Jon Yeager- Like a Train

Cop Shoot Cop- Two At A Time

Firewater- Anything at All

Cat Dail - Think of a Story

Monday Machines- Spinning Plates

Motorhead- I Don't Believe A Word

Ross Phazor- You'll Never Change

Wire- Flat Tent

Norine Braun- I'm The One

G-Spot- Happy Denial

Jupe Jupe- If I Could Go Back In Time

Nicholas Howard- Blood From a Stone

Monacy- Orbit

Jeannine Hebb- Only Ones

Shawn Farley- The Last Time We Talked

Lucinda Williams- Something About What Happens When We Talk

Purrs- Fear of Flying

Cat Nights Begin- and Once the Last of Autumn Leaves

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 6/25/2011

Stefanie Seskin- Chill Now

Stranglers- Skin Deep

Curtis Mayfield- No Thing

Rickie Lee Jones- Young Blood

Tracy Chapman- Son of a Preacher Man

Hot Tuna- Hesitation Blues

The Band- The Shape I'm In

Jefferson Starship- Hyperdrive

Ten Years After- If You Should Love Me

Rare Earth- Satisfaction Guaranteed

Garbage- Temptation Waits

Elu- Coventry Carol

Lou Reed- Don't Talk To Me About Work

Bob Dylan- One More Cup of Coffee

Jennings- Doorway

Nijole Sparkis- Everything

Astronauts of Antiquity- Beautiful Fate

The Service Industry- Seaworld

Gong- Tropical Fish

The Geraldine Fibbers- Dusted

Guiltless Cult- What Do I have To Say?

Green Man- I Am Stretched On Your Grave

Traffic- Love

Joan as Policewoman- The Ride

Fleetwood Mac- Believe Me

The Kinks- Life Goes On

Carpenters- Top of the World

Leo Kottke- Ice Cream

Eat Stuff, Stay Young

2011-06-20T20:40:00.000-04:00

This (above) is a picture of me, circa 1999. Years of heavy drinking and drug use had turned me into a withered, skinny, shaky derelict of an old man while I was still in my 30s.

Fortunately, I quit using hard drugs sometime around the year 2000 and that allowed my body to retain most of the calories in the alcohol I was consuming, minus a few calories here and there from vomiting and the occasional bleeding injury. In any case, by 2004 I had stopped being so withered and skinny and I became a fat, bloated blimp. I only shook when I wasn't drinking- which was never- so I was pretty steady most of the time.

But the Fall of 2005 brought with it the Fall of Me. I survived, but just barely. Sometimes it seems like part of me died that year and perhaps it was a part of me that I'm better off without.

Or maybe it is still inside somewhere, lurking and waiting...but for what?

After all, you can't blow up the Hindenburg twice.

I did have a relapse of sorts recently. I found myself mixing a live band on-the-air for the first time in about a year- I'd had a years-long binge of live music starting back in 2005, and I thought I'd cured my mixing addiction by replacing it with the guitar-playing habit that I thought I had kicked back in my drinking days ( see how these cycles work?).

These days, I can't seem to go a day without at least a few minutes of guitarizing. I say this not without a certain amount of lasting gratitude, a gratitude which circumstance does not allow me to convey directly, but which is there nonetheless. I hope you understand.

Anyway.

This is me now, doing something that I love to do: admiring myself...um...I mean, setting up a broadcast sound-stage at our local non-profit FM station:

If you have ever listened to my radio show or to one of my broadcast/podcasts, I would like to take a minute to personally thank you for doing so. It is a truly a labor of love, but it is worth it knowing that there are people out there, friends and strangers alike,who actually enjoy what I do...I mean, wow. That is a great feeling.

Having my own radio show is an honest-to-Godzilla childhood dream of mine come true, it really is.

This is what it looks like when I'm playing records for you...we have two old-fashioned turntables and those records are the real deal, straight outta my personal collection, scratches and all.

Of course, there's more to radio than just spinning plates. You gotta know what the Fancy Knobs do, for one thing. And sometimes you get to meet really cool people. Or maybe instead of them, you'll meet my friend Kevin (below, middle), a.k.a, the redoubtable Mr. Atavist .
A year or three ago, I showed Kevin how the Fancy Knobs work and now he is conquering the world with his own show, one great unknown band at a time.

But enough about me and the people who are lucky enough to bask in my greatness. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about us.

Nah...let's keep talking about me, 'cause I'm kinda bummed out that you can't come over for dinner tonight- I made a nice summertime vegetarian treat for you and I kinda wanted to surprise you with it. There's a lot of ardor in my larder for you, you know.

First I soaked my wheat, which you can see in the background, then I threw a bunch of chick peas and some tahini and other bits of things into my food processor...note that you should put most of the spices and small bits in first, but I had some extra parsley and roasted pepper, so it went in last.

Pressed buttons until the machine got loud and the food spun around like clothes in a washer.

After a few minutes, it looked like this. Not ready to eat, but much more colorful than my rather bland black-and-white laundry.

After much grinding and whirring, I eventually had a big bowl of the yummy, healthy goop known as hummus. Because you said you loved hummus.

Anyway, by now the wheat had finished soaking, so I added a bunch of stuff that I just happened to have lying around the kitchen to the wheat until it turned into tabbouleh. Which is pretty damned good, if I must say so myself. And I must say so myself, because no one else is here tonight to say anything to me or for me.

Sigh.

Not that I miss you or that I like having you around you or anything like that...I just hate having all this extra food. I knew you'd understand.

The kicker is the cucumber dressing. It's easy as hell to make and it tastes great on top of hummus and tabbouleh. Sliced cukes, added oil, vinegar, pepperoncini , a little sugar, some garlic and the leftover bits of mint, red peppers and parsley from the stuff I made earlier.

Put it all in the 'fridge and let it chill...

What's that? You can't come over?

Damn. No, it'll keep...yes, literally, haha. I'm glad you don't mind leftovers.

On the bright side, that means more dessert for me. I made these special just for you but I dunno how long they'll last...

Damn. My stomach hurts. Must've been all that hummus.

.

Trouble In The Air

2011-06-18T19:54:00.001-04:00

I used to have the occasional head-butt with our old station manager, but she did a lot more work than I realized and it is starting to show now that she is gone.

This morning, for instance I was listening to the radio stream and a channel was out. Again. So I grabbed a few tools that I really hoped I didn't have to use (because I pretty much don't know what they do and some of them are really sharp) and hustled down to station, where I traced wires and generally got underfoot until I rigged up a temporary solution that lasted at least long enough for me to finish my shows and record the podcasts linked below.

Four straight hours of live broadcast is a lot of broadcast and I'd be damned if I was gonna let a bunch of guerrilla wiring ruin my shows. So there.

For your enjoyment, I present:

6182011 New Breakfast Snob & 6182011 Songs From The Big Hair Download

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 18 JUNE 2011

Rathkeltair- It's All Good

Damien Dempsey- It's All Good

The Purrs- Mostly

Astronauts of Antiquity- Everywhere

Jeannine Hebb- Too Late To Change Me

Angelfish- Dogs In A Cage

Love Kills Theory- Poverty of Student Life

801- Flight 19

Mythica- Don't Be

HuDost- Skeleton Key

mr. Gnome- Three Birds

Cafebar 401- Damn These Blues

Belly- Untogether

Peter Tosh- Won't Fool Me Again

Ramsey Lewis- Sun Goddess

The Kinks- Get Up

XTC- Poor Skeleton Steps Out

Al Stewart- Song On The Radio

Alan Parsons- One More River

Jethro Tull- Big Dipper

Frames- Monument

Stackridge- Happy In The Lord

Cat Nights Begin- Of Mettle

Traffic- Withering Tree

Shannon Sharon & Steve Earle- Galway Girl

Little Feat- Time Loves A Hero

SONGS FROM THE BIG HAIR 18 JUNE 2011

Birthday Party- Guilt Parade

Stranglers - Let Me Down Easy

Dire Straits- Setting Me Up

Dave Davies - In You I Believe

Nouvelle Vague- In a Manner of Speaking

Tuxedomoon- Jinx

Warren Zevon- The Factory

David Lindley- Talk To The Lawyer

X- Because I Do

Replacements- Go

Pretty Things- No Future

Dream Syndicate- When You Smile

Robyn Hitchcock- The Cars She Used To Drive

Husker Du- These Important Years

Crack The Sky- Frozen Rain

Wire- Getting Sucked In Again

Hawklords- Psi Power

Peter Blegvad- Model of Kindness

Suzi Quatro- Breakdown

Waterboys- All The Things She Gave Me

Golden Palominos- Strong, Simple Silences

Lou Reed- Underneath The Bottle

Meat Puppets- Lost

Pat Benatar- Helter Skelter

King Crimson- Sleepless

Troublefunk- Woman of Principle

Richard Thompson- Bone Through Her Nose

Joe Jackson- 50 Dollar Love Affair

Neil Young- Shots

Melt

2011-06-18T08:45:00.003-04:00

Obviously, I don't know anything about women and they know everything about me, including how totally awesome I am. So, um, er, nevermind about all that depressing stuff I may or may not have said.

Change Of Pace

2011-06-16T21:43:00.002-04:00

I forgot to take my anxiety pill this morning. At work, I realized that I haven't been taking my meds for at least a week or so, so when I got home I checked my supply- it was almost untouched. I guess I'll leave them be for now, I don't feel unsettled enough to warrant needing medication right now. (Note the use of the qualifier right now. I'm happy, not delusional.)

At the grocer's this evening I made the impulsive decision to wheel my cart into an actual , honest-to-Godzilla full service check-out lane, which had no line and two attendants, two young black girls, one to ring the register and one to bag the items. The bagging girl asked me if wanted paper or plastic and was humorously admonished by the cashier for not calling me 'sir'.

"Please, whatever you don't call me 'sir'. When the pretty girls start calling me sir, I know I'm done for." They thought this was hilarious and they started joking about texting me because I was so sweet. At least I hope they were joking.

In any case, mine is not the sort of personality that naturally lights up a room or even enlivens a supermarket checkout line. Or is it? I'm not sure, exactly. I've spent so much of my life wasted in one way or another that it is sorta hard to define what a 'baseline normal' for me is in the first place. But I'm giving it another go.

And there have been some times lately when I've been really, really nervous- like dating, for instance- but I don't want to be a medicated date. Nervousness, within limits, is actually acceptable, even expected on a date-and if it isn't , you need to dump your date and find someone more empathetic.

One thing I do know is that I've got some pretty serious fortifications built around myself, and the person who built those moats and walls did a pretty thorough job- but there are still a few weak spots where an intruder with enough moxie could sneak in, for good or ill.

I spent a lifetime building those walls and pits and it took me by surprise when someone I'd never met before saw directly through all of those carefully-erected defense. She didn't sneak through them, she did acknowledge they existed, but she chose to ignore them and got right into the core of me. The raw, hurt part of me that not everyone gets to see.

You've been hurt really badly. Really, really badly. Don't know who did it, but you need to let that shit go forever if you want a new relationship. Are you sure you are ready to date?

Busted.

I could tell that lying wasn't going to work, so out came the short version of a long story best left off this blog. My date listened to this story and I was afraid she was going to leave, but instead she told me a story of her own. It was like my own, but worse. And when she was done, she looked at me like I was going to get up and leave, because this is probably some pretty heavy shit for a first date, but I didn't leave. I was already hooked by this point. An addict needs a partner who can see right through them...most addicts avoid people who can tell when they are lying, but I find it refreshing and attractive. And freeing...no need to worry about what to say and how to say it, for instance, since the truth seems acceptable.

But mostly it was laughter. And more of the same the following weekend and the mutual feeling seems to see each other again soon, so that is good. As good as it has been for a long, long time.

But if it doesn't work out, I won't be destroyed, not like last time. After last time I really did want to shut myself off from anything and anyone good. At the time it felt like I wanted to blot it all out it forever, but I found that I can't maintain that level of despair without alcohol or certain drugs, and I'm just not willing to drink or use those drugs again.

Without alcohol and drugs, I'll never enjoy the nihilistic misery I've longed for all these decades.

I really did want to give up about six months ago, just give up and die, thinking no one would miss me and it would all be for the better if I just vanished from the planet.
Can you believe that?

Probably you can, at least if you ever drank alcoholically or used hard drugs. This particular case of The Zero was woman-induced, but the feeling came from the same unutterably bleak place that the alcoholic part of me lives. Being sober doesn't keep you from being happy, but it doesn't keep me from being sad either. It just makes me normal, or closer to it anyway.

But I didn't drink or start sniffing shit again, and after a period of emotional mourning, I started dating. Getting strung-out on hard drugs is actually a whole lot easier than dating , but I stayed with it and maybe, just maybe something good has come of it, something real and lasting- something I've never really had.

Or not. I did manage to give up hope for months, and nothing is set in stone, I know something horrible could happen again. And if it does, I'll mope for a while and then I'll get up and try again. But I know that I won't self-destruct over it.

I can trust myself.

I never thought I'd say that.

Whatever happens, I know that I won't spiral out of control and back into the gutter. That knowledge was certainly worth a broken heart.
Or two.
Or as many it takes.

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Death Gives Pause

2011-06-13T17:42:00.002-04:00

Some of my most vivid dreams take place in the same setting, a beach surrounded by cliffs so high that the beach seems as if it is seated at the bottom of an ancient canyon. Gravity is user-friendly in this place, and in some dreams I half-levitate, half-fly from stony clifftop to sandy beach, over and over again, simply for the sheer exultation of being able to do so.

But I'd nearly forgotten about this place, it had been so long since my last visit, and it had changed in my absence. It still had the same air of comfortable mystery to it, but the water had become a river- a stream really- and it was running through a valley of low, hazy mountains. It felt sheltered and safe and it didn't occur to me until after I woke up that I forgot to check the local gravity while I was there. I probably could have floated if I'd felt like it, but it didn't seem necessary at the time.

I found a rock that was actually a chair and sat down to watch the water. After a while I realized that I'd been joined on my rock by a friend, or perhaps my friend had been there all along and I hadn't noticed. In any case, I was glad to see her and couldn't help but laugh a little, which made her look at me quizzically.

"What?"

"Nothing...I mean, I'm amazed you found this place. It's not like I drew you a map or anything."

" A map? Dude, you are so literal sometimes."

Me, literal? I thought that was funny, so I laughed. My friend tells me the same thing in real-life and it makes me laugh then too, even though she is right.

"Dude, why are you crying? Everything's groovy, you worry too much."

Crying?

There were mysterious flecks of golden light swirling in her auburn eyes but for some reason I was enraptured by her eyebrows. Her brows were the most beautiful things that I'd ever seen, which struck me as an extremely bizarre thing to think and made me laugh even harder. How could I possibly be crying?

"Hey, serious here. Stop crying."

I wanted to protest that I wasn't crying, that I had no reason to cry except maybe some tears of happiness- I'm far too stoic for that sort of thing, of course- but I felt a drop of something wet, then another- I looked down at my hands and they were catching teardrops as if it were raining sorrow. Which it was. From me. In buckets.

Damn. That's embarrassing.

But I felt fine when I woke up. I even toyed with the idea of calling in sick just for the health of it, calling in "well", as it were. There are days that I feel really good and it is a shame to have to waste that feeling at work- this morning was like that, but I went in anyway.

At some point in the late morning I took a break and looked at Facebook. An announcement had gone out that my old friend Tim M. had passed away after a long and painful battle against cancer. This was sudden news to me and many of his friends; most of us knew about the cancer but I thought it was in remission. It wasn't.

I've sometimes heard people make off-hand comments about what to do when a Facebook friend dies. Who posts what where and what does one say?, etc. I dunno, I don't really care either.

What I do know is what happens when a real-life friend dies and you find out about it on Facebook. First you check some mutual friends to make sure this isn't some sort of mix-up or misunderstanding. Then you look at all the piles of suddenly pointless-seeming paperwork surrounding you and then you return your gaze to the computer screen.

By this point you aren't really reading anything, but all those tiny pictures of familiar faces seem reassuring somehow and it is hard to stop looking. But there is work to do, so you go and start doing it.

Except that this isn't a dream. You aren't laughing inside, those really are tears running down your face.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't cry when people die. I'm all tough and shit.

So you call your boss and answer his questions about the database and then you decide to leave the office before someone sees you break down and start weeping, because the last thing you want people thinking is that you are some kinda pussy or sensitive-poet type. Because that shit truly will end in tears.

So you go home and think for a while about what is what, and when was when and how is how and how it is a bloody fucking miracle that you made it home without someone telling you that "it's all good", because it isn't "all good". It never is. On a human level, even during the very best of times, things are mostly fucked-up, things are definitely not "all good". War, poverty, famine- none good.

Tim is dead. That isn't good. It is hard to take the death of a friend impersonally so you change back to first-person and continue.

I take a look at what could easily be a dark spiral of morbid rumination and I shake my head. I think of my friend and her magical eyebrows. She was right, of course. I am being far too literal for my own health and I might miss something absurd, something silly and crucial that I need to be part of. Something good.

We can't stop people from dying. Or fighting. Or being assholes. Or from doing the horrible, carelessly harmful bullshit that we do to each other and to ourselves every single, goddamned fucking day without even thinking twice about it.

Why are you so angry? Why am I so sad? Mind your own damn business and stop looking at me that way. Deal with it. What do you mean by that? Go away. Leave me alone. Fuck off.

Most of that stuff I can't change, but I should work on the parts that I can change. I owe that much to my friends, living and dead, myself included.

-

(This cup's for you, Tim. You'll know what I mean)

I Can Fix That

2011-06-12T19:36:00.004-04:00

I'm a lucky guy. My music geek dream comes true every Saturday when I do my radio program. I don't always know what genre or theme that I'm working with, so I let my subconscious do the hard work for me and I concentrate on distinguishing clearly labeled buttons from one another.

About the only thing that could make doing my show better is knowing that there is a beautiful woman listening to my show because it is my show and she likes me even when I'm not on the radio. And that she likes to see me, despite me never being on TV at all. It's a pretty amazing feeling. I'm not sure where it is going but it feels good, there is no element of wrongness to it, just a slow getting-to-know-you in person and in real-life process that I've not experienced as a s sober adult. It feels great. I'm a lucky guy.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB JUNE 11 2011

(PODCAST DOWNLOAD HERE)

--------------------------------------------

Taxi To The Ocean- Flag On The Moon

Slo Mo - Home is Where is the Heart is

Peter Bayreuther- Hey Baby

Eileen Ivers- Paddy in Zululand

Elu- Lose Control

Bird York- Never Gonna Find Us

Damien Dempsey- Celtic Tiger

Tidal Arms- Social Landlord

Erika Song- Is That So Strange

Robert Fripp- Chicago

Mute Speaker- Crab People

Cursive- Fairtytales Tell Tales

Dare Dukes- Ballad of Darious McCollum

Area 27- Black Sun

A'tris- Light and Shadow

Taxi To The Ocean- Hold On To Me

Cecile Corbel- O Stor mo chroi

Golden Palominos- Break In The Road

Cafebar 401- Couch Potato

Garbage- Bad Boyfriend

HuDost- Invisible

Rathkeltair- Something Good For A Change

Entheogenic- Fire, Horse and Storm

Green Man- Cold Blows The Wind

Sharon Knight- Serpentina

Thanks for tuning in!

How Lil' Kim Gave Me My Groove Back

2011-06-05T14:23:00.000-04:00

You probably wouldn't think that North Korea's megalomaniac despot Lil' Kim would have much to do with my ongoing search for love, and 99.99% of the time that would be a good thing, because the less that Lil' Kim has to do with your love-life, the better.

To paraphrase Tom Robbins: "The song Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing was not composed in North Korea."

But not long ago I started a correspondence with a young local woman who told me that her dream vacation was to visit North Korea. In my book, expressing a desire to visit one of the most brutally oppressive nations on the planet is a really good conversational gambit, so I followed up on that.

She told me that N. Korea has been granting more Western tourist access lately, that of course it was all State-Propaganda-Doctrine-Dinners and visits to faked-up 'worker's paradises', but it is apparently dirt cheap and the food (taken from the mouths of starving children, no doubt) is supposed to be top-notch.

Plus, it will be on the last chance we will have to see a corrupt, crumbling ninth-world communist hell-hole up-close and personal while it is in mid-decline, as most of those opportunities vanished with the demise of the Cold War and subsequent dismantlement of the Eastern Bloc.

Clearly, this was my kinda girl.

But before we could make our travel plans, I met another young woman on line. Of the countless hundreds of local women on-line, she was the only one who appeared when I refined my search by adding 'atheist' as a descriptor.

The only one. One. One is the perfect number for me.

So we chatted on-line until dawn and the next night we went out...we met the corner bar, where she had a beer and I had tea...it really doesn't bother me to be in bars (unless smoking is allowed), especially if I'm in rapt conversation with a lovely and utterly, unbelievably, engaging woman. Then we went to see our local minor-league baseball team play- which was her idea!- and had a great time sitting in the nosebleeds, watching people more than the actual game. It turns out we are both NFL fans and are both just biding time until something happens on that particular miserable front...but a football fan! How cool is that?

We talked about our mutual 'dating' adventures and I told her that so far the second-most alluring dating offer I'd gotten was to tour North Korea, which I was actually sorta into.

My new friend then informed me that she'd been stationed in Korea while in the Army and that in her opinion there might be better vacation spots than North Korea...she might have included Turkish prisons or the interior of a live volcano on that list.

Clearly this was also my kind of girl.

After the game, we had more beer and tea and after the bar closed, we sat together on what passes for my front porch and shared our first kiss.

Neither one of us was in a particular hurry to say good-bye this morning, but we did. We sent each other simultaneous thank you notes and wound up chatting for hours, despite having just parted.

Life is getting better, it really is.

And I had a really awesome radio show too:

PODCAST HERE

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, JUNE 4, 2011

The Kinks- Scum Of The Earth

BeBop Deluxe- Piece of Mine

Generic Tribe- Seven Pounds

Geraldine Fibbers- A Song About Walls

Stackridge- Spin Round The Room

Randy Newman- Back On My Feet Again

Captain Beefheart- Nowadays A Woman's Gotta Hit A Man

Happy Birthday- Birthday Party

Excesses- Klark Kent

Astronauts of Antiquity- Strangest Places

Green Man- She Moved Through The Fair

Melomane- Even Though You're Born Toulose

Cat Nights Begin-Funkadelicatessan

Frames- Live Forever

Concrete Blonde- Tomorrow, Wendy

Stefanie Seskin- I Just Keep On

Damien Dempsey- Patience

Claanad- The Other Side

Joan As Policewoman- Holiday

Monday Machines- Ruined Morning

Dropkick Murphys- Shipping Off To Boston

Eman and Friends- Come To Poland

Jefferson Airplane- 3/5 of a Mile in Ten Seconds

Loreena McKinnett- Mummer's Dance

Manda Mosher- Lay Me Down

Jen Foster- Broken

Scream Daisy- Bees

Leo Kottke- Nothin' Works

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Who knows what the future holds?

Sex, Drugs,Tires, Spreadsheets and the Distant Echo of Boogie-Woogie Piano

2011-05-31T14:46:00.005-04:00

By 'sex' I mean dating. And by 'dating', I mean 'not having sex', so the first word of this headline is inherently meaningless and was simply used to catch your attention in a cheap,tawdry fashion- and terms like 'tires and spreadsheets' would most likely fail to achieve that goal.

Not that I'm totally against meaningless, no-future sex with near-strangers, but I'm at the point in my life where I want some long-term stability from my partner, which means no more adulterous plundering on my part, despite that being my only current option.

The quick gratification isn't worth the lingering guilt-and if I didn't feel the guilt, I'd have to admit that there was something seriously wrong with me, I mean, I'm sure that I have my share of bad qualities, but I'd like to think that callous amorality is not one of them.

Here's a funny thing. Obviously, I don't mind blogging about my own personal failings and troubles, but this here dating stuff is a touchy, tricky subject, especially on account of me being so fucking desperately lonely that I signed up for a major dating site. And I'd like to date a woman who is savvy enough to find this blog, so I better be careful what I say...um...good luck, right?

Maybe that isn't so crazy. At this point in my life, I'd prefer a period of old-fashioned courtship instead of a quick and pointless affair - I have this strangely non-male desire to actually like the person that I'm having sex with and to have the kind of relationship that grows past 140 characters.

So far, my search isn't going especially well, at least not measured in quantity, but that is to be expected.

I'm not an easy fit in the 'web-date' pigeonholes and I've met feral children equipped with better social filters than myself...but I got a few replies that were sincere and one in particular that I find quite attractive- she's smart, funny, impressively self-possessed, creatively expressive and she even took the time to listen to me on last night's radio show -and said that she enjoyed it!

So I just asked her out and I am anxiously waiting her reply as I type this...blogging as a combination distraction/confession , if you will.

(UPDATE: She said yes!)

Wish me luck. Life is good , but I need a real girlfriend to share it with- one that doesn't have a husband and/or multiple boyfriends and who isn't ashamed to be seen in public with me and with her friends -and my friends.

The closest to getting laid that I've come in the last month or so was the giant screw that I found embedded in my car's tire. The screw was actually preventing the air from escaping, but any leak- even a slow leak- is a bad thing, so I took it in to a garage to see if the tyre could be repaired.

No, it couldn't, and hey, how about that alignment wear on the other ones?...it was long, expensive afternoon, but at least I'm driving again.

Spreadsheets? The less said about them, the better.

Piano? Ah! I did a guest DJ spot for my friend P.Swann on her excellent show 'Can't Stop The Music'. Her show is "cheesy goodness", so I got to play quite a bit of material that I wouldn't normally play on my own show, my own show being all deadly-serious and wot.

Oh yeah...drugs. I forgot to mention them. What I meant to say was that the following two broadcasts might make a lot more sense if you are really, really high.

But don't take my word for it, get yer podcasts here:

NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: 5/28/2011

CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC: 5/29/2011

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, MAY 28th 2011

Traffic- Walking In The Wind

Larry Graham - Can't Stand The Rain

Hot Tuna- See The Light

Good Rats -Does It Make You Feel Good?

The Purrs- Fear of Flying

Chrome- Meet You In The Subway

MX-80 Sound- Lady In Pain

Gil Scott-Heron - The Bottle

Osibisa- Y Sharp

Al Kooper- The Monkey Time

Astronauts of Antiquity- Soup du Jour

Bob Dylan- Isis

XTC- Scarecrow People

The Kinks- Nobody Gives

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- Road To Babylon

Clannad- Struggle

Rare Earth- Long Time Leaving

Ten Years After- If You Should Love Me

Steve Hillage- Palm Trees (Love Guitar)

Slick/Kantner- Silver Spoon

Michael H. Price- Save Me A Slice of That

Lou Reed- Senselessly Cruel

Roxy Music- Pyjamarama

David Lindley & El-Rayo X- Make It On Time

Can't Stop The Music , May 29th 2011: New Breakfast Snob Guest Edition

Will Bradley- Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar

Mother Gong- The Upwardly Mobile Song

Danny Kaye- Ballin' The Jack

Golden Gate Quartet- Atom and Evil

Louis Armstrong- A Kiss To Build A Dream On

Nirvana Sitar and String Group- The Letter

Dinah Shore and the Pied Pipers- Tic,Tic,Tic

Miraim Makebe- For What It's Worth

Katie Lee- Properly Loved

Check Other- Night of the Living Dead

Bob Crosby and his BobCats- Dear Hearts and Gentle People

Marcy -The Gospel Express

Adriana- The Garden of Sin-

Swing on a Star-

National Lampoon- Deteriata-

Southern Sons Quartet - Praise The Lord and Pass The Ammunition-

Skorkian- Hot Butter-

- Dinah Shore- Blues in the Night

The Ink Spots- Address Unknown-

Mike H. Price- Love Roller Coaster-

Myrtle Hilo- Lover's Prayer

Katie Lee- Will To Fail

Al Jolson- Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Ray Manzarek- Art Deco Fandango-

Herbie Hancock- Fat Mama

Petula Clark- Fill The World With Love

- The Ramones- Beat on the Brat

Lou Reed- Rock and Roll Heart

Betty Hutton- He's A Demon

Danny Kaye -Slow Boat To China

Mike H. Price- Till The Real Thing Comes Along

Jonathon Coulton- Skullcrusher Mountain

Telly Savalas- Sunday Morning Coming Down-

The Ink Spots- Bless You For Being an Angel-

(With special thanks to Mr. F.LeMur for the infospots)

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My Lonesome Bus

2011-05-26T20:10:00.002-04:00

I ride the bus to work and have been doing so for almost 18 months. Not only do I save money on gas and parking, but I also spend a lot less time working on my ancient Toyota. And, strangely enough, I enjoy the bus ride itself.

A small-city bus commute is much different than Big City Mass Tran. In Chicago, for example, I imagine that one could take the same L train to and from work every day for years without ever engaging in any sort of meaningful social interaction, without ever making a friend. In fact, safety and common sense should generally supersede any effort to make friends with people on the subway.

But my city bus is different. It is small and I see the same people day in and day out, I even know most of our little bus gang by name. On a good day, the front of the bus is almost like an impromptu book club, as most of the folks who sit in the front section are avid readers and like most readers, like to talk about what they are reading. I recently caught some good-natured flak for reading Joyce's Portrait Of...and loving it. I made up for it by admitting that I could not make it through Ulysses. But then I made it worse by mentioning that Ulysses, along with The DaVinci Code, was one of the very few books that I have ever been unable -or unwilling- to finish. It turned out that DaVinci had a lot of fans, but to an old-school conspiracy buff, it was dull and derivative stuff, not exactly up to Foucault's Pendulum or Illuminatus! standards.

In any case, I think it's cool to be able to talk about books on the bus.

But lately the bus has been very crowded, I suspect gas prices are encouraging more people to ride, which is a good thing...except it has broken up our little book club. We are now scattered willy-nilly wherever there is an empty seat and I am usually surrounded by strange New Riders.

The New Riders look just like normal people , but instead of books they carry tiny gadgets that connect to tiny headphones . Some of them surf the net on tiny screens. None of them seem to be engaged with anything outside of their own skulls. The New Riders are tense, unapproachable and they tend to miss their stop on the first day or two of their New Riding, probably because they are preoccupied with whatever is on their tiny little screens instead of paying attention to the world outside.

I'm a radio DJ and a long-time guitar player. I love music. But I have no desire at all to own an iPod or any other 'Walkman' type headphone device. I loved my 1980's walkman, sure, but these days I like to be aware of what is going on around me, and sound is an important part of the environment. I know people who take iPods on camping trips so that they can walk through the quiet solitude of the deep woods while listening to Nine Inch Nails. Personally, I think they are missing the point of a deep woods hike, but what do I know? I quit taking acid decades ago and I never really liked NIN that much anyway.

But today I was surrounded by New Riders and all of them- no exceptions- had headphones on. When I looked out the window, almost every pedestrian I saw was wearing earbuds or a phone clip.

The same for the lobby of the building I work in. Everyone I saw there had some sort of electronic media barrier between themselves and the world around them, a phone to the ear, a headset on, a 'phantom' conversation with an ear-clip, a laptop to stare at...no one was paying attention to anything in their immediate vicinity.

This world is a pickpocket's dream come true, I thought.

No wonder people need GPS these days- they aren't paying attention to where they go or to where they have been- hell, most modern navigators couldn't find the sidewalk if they tripped over the kerb, much less follow a roadmap from point A to point B.

When did this happen? When did we start to -as a majority culture- decide to create portable cocoons of safe, known comforts that we could use to shield ourselves from each other and our surroundings, to send a 'don't talk to me' message in our daily public activities? To lose interest in the minute and mundane details that make the world an interesting place to live?

Or maybe I'm imagining it. That is possible. I read a lot of books and some of them are underground comic books, so who knows what sort of crazy ideas I might have.

Sign Language of the Times

2011-05-22T12:28:00.000-04:00

The New Breakfast Snob Special Not-Exactly The Rapture Edition

aired:5/21/20100

FREE PODCAST HERE!

Pat Benatar- Pictures of a Gone World/Everybody Lay Down

Holy fucking brimstone fountains! I'm leading off my show with Pat Benatar!?

Surely the world has already ended and Hell is for children who thought they had escaped from their tragic pasts, only to have it all re-visited in the cruelest of ways...but wait, I can explain:

You see, the DJ before me inexplicably ended his show two minutes early, which completely caught me off-guard, since I was trying to trouble-shoot our internet and needed that two minutes to finish what I was doing and get ready for my show, and in my panic I just reached for whatever I could grab at the last second...

Aw, hell. I 'fess up. I used to think that Pat was hot and I still do. She's older than me and can still belt out the Big 'Reena Rock without auto-tuning -and anyway, sometimes one just needs to be hit upside the head with some mindlessly stupid rock and roll. You just do.

Everybody say yeah!

Rajay and the Saptut(?)- Up,Up and Away

A sitar-driven Muzak version of an insipid pop song that the adults in my life hated and sheltered me from. My adults liked cool music when I was a kid and I was never exposed to top 40 at home, something that helps make up for a lot of other things.

Hmmm, come to think of it, I was never forced into religion as a kid. The older that I get, the more thankful I am for this lack of indoctrination.

Parliament- Gloryhallastoopid

You will find more references to 'stoopid' in this week's show but none quite so funky as this one.

Crack the Sky- Maybe I Can Fool Everybody Tonight

No, sorry. Maybe next time.

Yes - Yours Is No Disgrace

Actually, yours is a disgrace of the soul wrapped inside a blanket of shame, soaked in the gasoline of avarice, set aflame with the twin-fired candle of sadomasochistic self-destruction and burned until the cold ashes of your life are dumped into a piece of cheap pottery which will be adorned with a plaque attesting to the fact that you died alone and unmourned ; a martyr-of-one to the lonely cause of your own manipulative, bizarrely willful and ultimately pointless self- degradation .

Text me sometime, why dontcha? I'll come over and fix your Internet real good.

Bob Dylan- Man Of Peace

Peter Tosh- Here Comes The Sun

This song is like, eerily prophetic, maaaaan. I mean, here it comes. Again!

Beatles- I've Got A Feeling

Everybody say yeah!

Robbie Robertson- Vanishing Breed

Are you still here? Cool.

Tuxedomoon- What Use?

Some people quit their jobs and gave away all their money in advance of the Rapture Hoax...good luck getting all that stuff back on Monday.

Al Stewart- Life In Dark Water

HuDost-Skeleton Key

Great Canadian band, this song ties into Fontainbleau and more...

Blue Oyster Cult- Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll

I thought the end of the world was gonna rock. If the world had ended in 1974, it would have totally fucking rocked -like Montrose, Bloodrock or Blue Oyster Cult rock. If the world were to end today, it would probably lip-sync some kinda suck-ass white-girly-boy suburban gangsta rap while we collapsed into fiery damnation and eternal suffering..or maybe it would go 'emo' on us, whatever 'emo' is.

I hope the apocalypse doesn't sing 'Praise Rock'. Whatever 'emo' is, it can't be worse than 'praise rock'.

I'm pretty sure that Jesus, were he real, would recognize 'Christian Rock' as what it is- a Satanic plot to make the listener yearn for the self-inflicted peace and serenity of an early, unconsecrated grave.

Stills-Young Band - Fontainebleau

This could have been written in 2009 but wasn't.

Ramsey Lewis- Gemini Rising

Steve Hillage- AftaGlid

From the 'Fish Rising' album, hitting on the glid riff introduced in Gong's Angel's Egg LP. Gong and Gong spin-offs are dedicated recyclers of riffs. Green!
.
Oh, that is a different album... nevermind.

Peter Green- In The Skies

Up, up and away. Could be Santana but isn't.

Ten Years After- Religion

Pretty much sums it up.

Carpenters- Saturday

Somewhere in Hell, Satan spreads his leathery wings and laughs.

Grateful Dead- Ripple

Demonic laughter shakes the CDs off of the shelf and the world comes to a sudden halt.

Randy Newman- Spies

I had a request for RN last week but didn't have any with me. But I remembered.

Stackridge- The Galloping Gaucho

Hahahahaha! Who were these guys?

Pretty Things- Bitter End

Grace Slick- Theme From 'Manhole'

Grace rips the roof off for 15-minutes. You can tell that she is ripping the roof off because she keeps saying "the roof is gone" over and over and over...when she is singing in English anyway.

The rest of the time is in some furring tongue.

I hope she isn't cussing in Mexican or something, 'cause that would be wrong.

..

Now What?

2011-05-20T18:58:00.000-04:00

My regional manager had a meeting with me today. He told me that my 'whistleblowing' has caused quite a lot of trouble in the upper management and they were having a conference call about it shortly.

I reminded him that I didn't blow any whistles, I merely paraphrased what was said in the Client meeting and repeated it back to the Client with suggestions for solving the various problems. No secrets were disclosed.

I thought I'd get a pat on the back of some sort for my work, but noooo...see, I copied our National Director on it too, and what I uncovered should have been noticed long ago by any one of the middle managers, and by calling attention to the error , I managed to make everyone in the management team look like negligent, incompetent, slack-ass buffoons.

I was surprised to hear about the trail of management embarrassment that I caused. I hadn't counted on that happening, but it was an awesome bonus, much better better than the last $50 raindrop I was given.

After the meeting, my boss said that they'd agreed that my plan was the best option available and that they were going to use it as the basis of an outline for a National Plan.

I told him that I was flattered that they had such confidence in me , but that report was specific to one location and that location was unique, that office uses a prototype system that no other office had adopted and that nothing contained in my report would apply to any of our other locations.

Oh. Is that bad?

Yes, it is.

I told him that my observation was that not one- not one single person on our Management Team- knew anything at all about [my Dept.] and that their unwillingness to listen and communicate had caused a few easily corrected errors to snowball into catastrophic avalanches
that could easily involve a lawsuit or four. And that if they were going to implement a National plan for my Dept., they'd be well served to consult me first, either as a Project Manager or as a private consultant.

And then I went home.

.

In and Out of Trouble

2011-05-16T19:53:00.002-04:00

In January of 2010 I took a new job as a records room file clerk, working as a service contractor inside a large insurance office. I'd done that sort of work as a temp plenty of times, so I knew exactly what to expect: a dull but survivable job - survivable as long as you have internet access, that is. It was on such a job that I started this blog, and looking back at my archives, I'd estimate that 70-80% was written from the confines of a cube or file room somewhere. It is the sort of job that, if you keep up as work comes in, you will be rewarded with many, many hours of free time. If you keep up.

But it is also the kind of job where you can do almost nothing for an entire year and no one will be the wiser. Not many people understand Corporate Records and Retention- and why should they? It is dreadfully boring stuff after all. If you wanted to, you could spend all day on FaceBook and just hide your backlog in whatever nooks and recesses are available. I have seen instances (not at this job, thank Godzilla) where disgruntled clerks were simply throwing files away instead of archiving them.

Lately, I've been traveling to D.C. on a regular basis to help sort out a huge mess that was left behind by a clerk who had been feeding critical documents to a pet goat, throwing them into a wormhole to another dimension or using some other multi-platform and untraceable filing technique. It has been a long and difficult project and last week I had a meeting with the highest-ranking Client IT Management there is. They agreed with my assessment of the situation.

I dutifully and thoughtfully prepared a meeting summary, along with a point-by-point identification of all the problem areas and a proposed solution for each, and sent it to my contractor boss. I also copied his boss,the two members of the Client Team who had led the meeting and my local boss.

At this point, it is important to note that my contractor bosses have almost no idea what my job is or how to do it and that they have been questioning some of my dire assessments and predictions. How do I know that?, they like to ask...so getting external validation -and kudos- from Client Global IT was huge for me. I knew I was right all along- and now I had support from on high. It was a proud moment and one that I was sure was going to be recognized with a much-needed real promotion.

But this morning my contractor boss said that I was in hot water with Big Boss because I copied the Client on my report- the same report that was based on a meeting with the Clients I copied. There was nothing in my report that wasn't openly discussed in the meeting, yet my boss wanted me to exclude the Client - and our Boss- from any further emails. He said that Boss was upset because "now that [I] had called attention to these problems, we will have to fix them".

Seriously, he said that.

That is my fucking job, to find and fix problems. We are service contractors. We get paid to do that kind of stuff and I just happen to be good enough at it to have worked my way out of my dead-end cube and into some high-level planning. Before the recent Client meeting, I did not have enough info to draft a plan- the Client Globals gave me valuable insight and suggestions that made it possible to do so- but I wasn't supposed to point out the problems? They know already!

As we uncovered more and more problems, we laughed together in the 'this or cry' way that people forced into working together on a horrible job do.

Instead, I was supposed to simply say that we would have a solution in place within 30 days. Which isn't possible and I'm not going to tell the client that it is OK when it is not. I said as much to my boss. This has heated the water that I'm steeping in just a bit more, a touch warmer now.

Between my contractor Bosses and the Client Bosses, I get a lot of conflicting info, but I keep my observations absolutely consistent no matter who I may be speaking with. I am not going to tell one Boss one thing and another Boss another thing and hope they never compare notes and find out the lie...I refused to do that. I didn't get fired over it, though, and a good thing, that.

I do not know why, but since Friday, our records clerks have been quitting all over the country mostly leaving no replacements in place and years of untouched work to be sorted. No one at many of these offices has any software training and I happen to be the system admin for that program...so today my Inbox is full of requests for me to travel to some cool places- Atlanta, D.C, Chicago...and some less thrilling ones like Milwaukee and New Jersey. Maybe Hawaii...long shot.

Big Boss Fwd: me a lot of 'help requests' he'd gotten from new and untrained staffers- can I help them, he asked. No mention of my report or my act of insubordination, which is a shame. I put my damn name on that report because I stand behind it and if my Boss thinks that is a problem , he needs to tell me directly- instead he has funny way of showing it- by asking me to fix yet more file room catastrophes.

So I'll be busy for awhile, traveling, I hope.

My company has some good things too- they will pay for my MS IT Certification if I take it, for instance- and for now no one is giving me any flak for 'over-stepping' bounds. There is too much work to be done for them to risk it by pissing me off and they know it.

I almost hate admitting it, but that feels good.

Still Life of the Rich and Famous

2011-05-11T20:18:00.000-04:00

My job sent me to Washington D.C. Tuesday to meet with the client's Global Team, who were in from the UK, installing some new hardware. The Global guys are pretty much in charge of everything and come across as major stiffs on-line but I found them pretty affable in person. We had a long but very productive meeting, which impressed the hell out of me. A productive meeting? The Biggest Boss confirmed my assessment of a certain situation we have, which made me feel extremely validated, since no one in our U.S. division seems to understand what I have been telling them about their leading zeroes, calender dates and hogshead/bushel conversions, plus their commas and ~ are acting up, which is a problem.

Someone else must have been having comma trouble that day, because my hotel reservation was botched...I had to wait in the lobby while the hotel contacted our travel desk. I was so tired by this point that I didn't really mind, since they had wi-fi and free coffee and I just wanted to sit for a while anyway.

Eventually the manager came out, introduced herself and told me they had upgraded my room to the 'Ninth Level', which was 'exclusive and private'. It even had a special elevator that the mortal patrons were not even allowed to ride on.

The elevator opened into a lounge area that was really like more of a library/den than a bar. There were trays of food and a fully stocked wet bar, all complimentary. It looked like it was all there for me and me alone, since there wasn't anyone else there.

I found the juxtaposition of sushi trays, cheese plates and truffle dishes to be odd, but not unwelcome.

My suite was a modern marvel.

The bathroom had two of the fanciest urinals that I have ever seen- but no sink, which I found puzzling.

For some reason they put the sink over by the bar.

Unlike most rooms, which have mini- bottles that cost a fortune, the Ninth Level suites all have mini-bars, and they are free. There was a time when I would have drank myself into a coma and probably gotten fired and/or hospitalized over it. I mean, four fifths liquor for one person for one night? That is a lot. Even at the zenith of my nadir I couldn't have pounded that much in one night. Unless I had a lot of coke, anyway..

For a minute, I thought about calling the desk and having someone remove the booze, but I wasn't the slightest bit tempted by it, so I let it be.

Plus if I'd been drunk, the balcony would have presented a falling hazard.

The beds had 'safety headboards' but there wasn't need for them on this trip.

It is lonely at the top, alas.

Misunderstanding Art and the People Who Make It

2011-05-06T19:54:00.004-04:00

Have you ever had a blogbuddy that you've read for months or even years , when suddenly in the course of a email or comment exchange, they will say something like: "I wish I was a writer"?

Perhaps you have a friend that occasionally gifts you with a painting- or a poem -or hand-made ornament of some sort, and then tells you that they wish they were an artist. You look around your home and see your friend's work adorning your walls, after all you've collected a number of their works over the years. In fact, the place wouldn't be quite the same without them.

So you look at your friend, who is sweet, kind and humble to a fault , and they look at you with their big, vulnerable, approval-seeking eyes as you struggle to find the words needed to comfort them.

What the fuck is wrong with you? is the proper way to console your friend.
Well, maybe not precisely those words, perhaps something like: I guess somebody who is an artist is signing your name on their art then, because I have a print hanging on my wall with your name on it and it is awesome.

They will inevitably shuffle their feet and mumble something about never really selling anything or making much money at it. This is when you have to watch your temper. Your poor friend was picked on enough in school and being mean won't help them much. There is something about a talented person who says things like "I suck at [art-form], I am a failure, waaaah" that makes you ( me) want to slap some self-esteem into them- but that isn't the instinct to follow. It'll backfire and make things worse.

What you try to do is explain that they shouldn't hold themselves to some impossible and contradictory double-standard based on money or acclaim. I mean, I think most readers of this blog would agree that 99% percent of popular art/music/media is utterly insipid drivel that is mass-produced and marketed at the pod-people demographic. Yet the people responsible for perpetrating this nonsense on us are held up as artists- or even worse-as critics with opinions that count. Plus they make oodles of money. But do you actually think what they do has more artistic value than what you do?

You produce maybe one painting every six months or so and when you are done, you usually give it to someone who you care about. That person cherishes it. When they have company at home, they like to show it off to their visitors. It will remain valuable to your friend as long as they live, and maybe longer. Can you say that about Susan Boyle CDs?

Personally, I'm not going hang an ugly piece of shit on my wall just to make you feel better about yourself. I might stop inviting you over instead. If I display it, it is because I like it and if you tell me that you suck, then you are insulting my taste.

And writers. Do you blog? Look at your sidebar. Do you have more than zero readers?

My take on writing is based on the famous Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment.

Simple version: In the experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed box that contains a radioactive pellet with 50/50 chance of decaying over a certain period of time. This decay, should it occur, will kill the cat. Schrodinger proposed that until an observer interacted with the cat- opened the box- the cat was neither alive nor dead but existed smeared and super-positioned in both states simultaneously, and that the 'real' status was determined at the moment of observation.

Your story is that cat. You place it on-line and wait. After a while you get a comment, someone likes it. You repeat the experiment over time and eventually 10 or 15 people start saying they like it and read most, if not all, of what you write.

The cat is alive. You have readers.

Congratulations! That makes you a writer. Hopefully it isn't posthumously like the fellow who wrote Confederacy of Dunces.

You have 10 or 15 people who actually care what you say and think and that is 10 or 15 more than most people get. My poor departed granny would have sacrificed her grandkids to Baphomet if she could have had half that many people pay attention to her stories.

Being a financially successful artist doesn't necessarily mean that you are a good one and being a good one doesn't necessarily guarantee an income. Crazy, innit?

And then there is the whole "suffering artist" thing. That is some black-cloud dreary-ass shit, man. Get the hell over it.

If you really must insist on suffering for your art, get a soul-killing 9-5 office job, wait tables, work retail or some other marginal job. That way you'll have at least have money for food and to help pay for your art of choice. And if you can afford an amp, a guitar, a place to live and a rehearsal space, then you aren't suffering. You have it made. Everyone hates their shitty job, that doesn't make you special. What makes you special is that you can express and release that emotion through your art...oh, right, except you'd have to be an artist to do that.

And if you are fortunate enough to be spared the necessity of a crappy job and have lots of free time to do your art-o-choice, then shut the fuck up with the suffering gabble already. If I could stay home and play guitar all day on a trust fund or lotto winnings, I would choose that and I wouldn't bitch about how nobody understands or appreciates me or my art.

Well, not much, that is.

Warning: Adult Content

2011-05-04T20:09:00.001-04:00

One of the most common ways to lose a reader's interest is by making gratuitously prurient appeals to their curiosity. Or by writing about sex.

If that doesn't drive them off, try pictures.

I don't know what it is about sex that people find so boring, but even my therapist changes the subject when I try to talk about it, so I'm guessing most people think about doing the fucking in the same way they think about doing the laundry- you feel better afterwards, but geez, what a boring chore, right?.

I think I must find it interesting simply because so much of it is new to me.

I didn't exactly mark the date on my calendar, but I think I gave up on the fucking either during my third or fourth year of cocaine abuse or it maybe it was during my first year of snorting heroin...all I know is that something that had once been very important to me had become irrelevant, if not impossible. And it stayed that way for a long, long time.

But before my gear started failing there were more than a few incidents that left me wondering if I was a truly horrible person. I mean, I was a hardcore drug-addict/alcoholic criminal living the rock-n-roll club life, but I was still a good person , right? My eight-balls always weighed out, and hey man, sorry about last time. I slept with my best friend's girlfriend more than a few times among other things, but I was still a good person, eh? Please ?

If you are a young man and your dick stops working for an extended period of time- months, not days- there is probably something else wrong with you. Like maybe you've been drunk for ten years longer than anyone should stay drunk. That was me in any case and eventually alcoholic withdrawal landed me in ER for a surgical holiday. Luckily I was in a coma for the worst of it, but when I was released I was pretty shaky emotionally, plus I was morbidly obese and dangerously hypertensive and that combination is pretty much a buzz-kill for sexiness.

A hundred years or so passed and I was finally in shape again and eventually I met a woman who felt like doing the fucking with me, the only problem was her boyfriend. She didn't care so much about that as I did- I had made up my mind that I would never again mess with 'taken' women.

A hundred years after that, my woman-friend broke up with her boyfriend and we finally got the chance to do some of the fucking. Let me tell you- that fucking stuff is a whole lot of fun, I kid you not. I don't know why it gets such a bad rep in our society or why no one ever mentions it. You'd think there'd at least be movies about the fucking, or a website- or something. Anything.

For quite a while I managed to keep my promise and restrain myself from doing the fucking with any married women.

My misguided adherence to a fragment of chivalric code led to a heartbreak that unsettled me much more than I knew- than I know, I'm still in therapy, after all- and led to some ill-considered retaliation by sexual proxy. Why should I say 'no' just because of some stupid vow that I never took, right?

That thing is there for the taking and if you don't take it, some other dude who isn't so squeamish will.

So do it, said-the-devil-on-my-shoulder. Twisted my poor arm, he did.

Let me put it like this: if I am traveling and I have known you for less than an hour and you manage to work your husband's impotence into a discussion about the pasta we are sharing, I'm going to use a rigid baguette for emphasis when I invite you back to my hotel room to do the fucking.
When you tell me you have to go to your car first, I will assume that you are actually bailing out through the back exit, so don't mind my look of surprise when you return fifteen minutes later, carrying a gym bag.

If I have known you for two hours and you are showing me the bag of fetish gear that you carry in your car, I will assume you have done this before and I'm not exactly the first one to wreck your home, so to speak. And you know, this is kinda fun. I can't believe it bores your husband so much...maybe that is why you keep the restraints and flogs in your car, so you don't bore him into being even less interested in the fucking than he already is.

My uncle is only "allowed" to listen to Sports Radio when he is in his car sans aunt, so maybe men think the fucking is boring and confusing in the same way women think NFL Football is dull and stupid, and women keep their whips and cuffs hidden so their men don't go narcoleptic or die of boredom. I must be easily amused , because I'm feeling sorta enthusiastic and my demonstration of that enthusiasm is making you smile beautifully, so maybe I'm not such a bad guy after all. Or at least not totally boring.

The next day lunch is skipped and it is back to the hotel for some more of the fucking. I make a joke that we are a couple of whores because we are on-the-clock, getting paid to do the fucking.
Ooops. You want me to call you that again? And again? Sure. Not a problem...but...what comes next, uh, uh. Not doing that. Nope.

________________

Next : Resolve is for losers.

The Temporary Song

2011-05-03T20:09:00.000-04:00

My secret girlfriend Ellen buys her wine by the case. I think that's pretty cool, because technically it will be six weeks until I am old enough to buy it myself. Not that I'd buy wine, I will be buying beer on my 21st birthday, not some stupid foreign wine that comes in a box packed full of straw and hay. Do they make wine in barns or something? I should Google it sometime.

Anyway, she buys it from this fancy wine 'shoppe' in her neighborhood, which is like a regular shop except smaller, spelled different and everything is more expensive than in regular shops. They don't sell anything in most shoppes that I've ever heard of, so it would be really boring for me to go there with Ellen if the shoppe weren't so close to the local Guitar MegaBucket. A Guitar MegaBucket is like the exact opposite of a 'shoppe' - plus it's full of guitars, so that makes it cool.

I play guitar in a band called The Sickening Thud, I know a little bit about guitars and wanted to take a look at some, so I told Ellen I would meet her at the GuitarMegaBucket after she got her wine. She yelled at me a little for that , but I know not to take it personal- she is just that way, yelling a lot when talking will do or when shutting up might be best. I think maybe she is getting crazy like old people get, I mean she's a lot older than me, which is why she is my secret girlfriend and not just a regular girlfriend like my regular girl Gloria. Ellen is like a shoppe and Gloria is more like a shop. But I'll talk about that later, maybe after I'm done with my guitar story.

There was an old bearded guy behind the counter at the guitar shop, he was talking to some normal-looking old dude:

...so I told him to follow along in E and he was fine, but when I said G or A or anything, really, he was lost, he had no idea what to do. It was like he just couldn't understand the symmetry of it at all. It was bizarre.

Did you try using barre chords to demonstrate how the position is really the same? I find that helps.

Yeah, but not with this one.

For a minute there, I thought they might be talking about guitar because letters E, G and A are like music notes on the guitar and a bar chord is this heavy cool thing that Chalice, the Sickening Thud's bassist, showed me how to play, except I can't quite press down hard enough on the strings to do it yet. It is called a 'bar chord' because you need to be able to play one if you want to get gigs in bars and me not being able to play one might explain why we haven't got many bar gigs yet, which would explain why we haven't been picked up by a record label.

When I turn twenty-one, I'll be able to go into the clubs and get chummy with the promoters and after that, the sky's the limit for the Thud.

But the dudes started talking about 'symmetry' - whatever that is-so I figured they must be keyboard players or something. The dude with the beard asked me if I needed help , so I asked to check out the 1959 Les Paul Custom re-issue, which at $9,000 was the most expensive guitar I saw on the wall. You wouldn't believe the attitude that Beard Dude gave me! I mean he was trying to sound all polite:

...no offense, but I think you'd be better off with an Epiphone...

An Epiphone! Did he think I was made out of money or something? Those can cost three or four hundred bucks! No way was I spending that kind of money! I just wanted to see what it felt like to play a fancy guitar and Mr. Beard had to go and be a total d!ck about it. Some people.

Anyway, the Beard set me up with an Epiphone (which I gotta say was not-so-bad, it was way better than my Hondo), plugged me into a miniature Vox amp and walked away. I was almost nailing some Tool riffs when Ellen walked in. She looked mad. I got nervous and flubbed my bar chord but she smiled a little and said I had great natural rhythm. Then she asked me if I wanted that guitar. I said sure, but if I'm dreaming I might as well dream about the 1959 Gibson over there.

But the next thing I knew, she was talking to Beard Guy and he was acting all nicey-nice all of a sudden. Ellen is a big-shot lawyer at the office I temp at. I have heard her use her lawyer-voice and she is one scary lady when she does. She used it on Beard Guy and you won't believe what she did next.

"Son", she told me," this gentleman has agreed to a reasonable price and if you want this guitar, I will buy it for you." She always calls me 'son' when we were out in public, which I think is weird because my name is Ben and I'm not her son.

"Uh, OK", was about all I could say and the next thing I knew we were driving away in her recently-repaired Jaguar with a case of wine and the world's best guitar in the backseat. If Ellen hadn't been so old and such a secret, I'd have been on Cloud Nine.

When we got back to her house she gave me a big kiss and asked me how I liked my new guitar and would I play a song for her?

I told her that I sure did like the guitar but I was worried because I didn't know how I was gonna explain it to Gloria. Gloria knew I didn't make enough money to buy something high-dollar like a Gibson guitar.

"You are worried about what that little slut thinks?", screamed Ellen, "I told you to dump her!"

"No you didn't", I said because it was true. "You said it was OK to see her as long as she didn't give me 'any little presents to give you'. I don't think you two would get along, so I don't think she would be giving you much in the way of pres.."

"SHUT UP! HERE IS WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO TELL HER!"

Ellen picked up the nine-thousand dollar guitar by the neck and swung it in a sweeping arc, crashing into the floor. Her house has nice carpeting and it took three swings before it broke, the neck breaking in two places and the strings whipping the headstock around like a crazy puppet.

I would have cried, but I was mad and maybe a little bit scared too, so I started yelling at Ellen.

I called her all the dirty words that she likes me to use when we do our private stuff and I figured that calling her all those things would calm her down and get her to do that special thing she does ...you know, what you see people on the internet do. Some people think that girls Gloria's age are really into that sort of thing, but really I think it is ladies like Ellen who invented it, if you get my meaning.

I sure was wrong about the calming down part.

Ellen hit me in the head with my broken guitar and threw me out of her house, making me walk all the way back to my folk's place. I know she'll stop being mad before long and will text me, but in the meantime maybe I'll learn my bar chord and work on my name-calling skills. It could even be a song.

.

Used Without Permission

2011-04-29T22:14:00.000-04:00

c.1994 Nina Paley

The comic above is used without permission.

I am not used that way.

I've given permission. I've signed every waiver, consent, release form and contract handed to me. I've swallowed my pride, I've swallowed my pills, I've practiced my breathing, had ten weeks of therapy -I've done everything that was asked of me and it still hasn't cured me of feeling badly hurt and badly used. With permission.

The last time I said "never again", my resolve lasted a few weeks or so before my depression and desperation got the better of me.

One evening earlier this year, I had a craving for a roast beef sandwich- a really good one, the kind you have to make yourself. So I went to the market, got fresh French bread, onions, some bouillon, horseradish, cheese and a pound of expensive deli beef that was on sale for a great price. It was so low that I asked the deli-dude if it was really that price. He said yes, it was. I got a pound, sliced thin. I would make onion soup and the best baked roast beef sub ever...I could taste it.

But when I got to check-out, the price came up as $13.99, nearly double what I had been told. I explained this to the cashier and she called the deli. They said it was 13.99, that he'd given me the wrong price by mistake. No apology or offer of reduced price, just the admission of error.

I only had cash with me , and not enough of that, so I decided not to buy it. Without the meat, the condiments and accessories were useless, so I didn't buy them either. A black cloud of failure, disappointment and betrayal settled in on me and I went home with no food at all. When I got there I curled up on my bed and cried for hours, wishing that I had died in 2005 when I had the chance, hating myself and everything about my life.

But my life is actually pretty good and I certainly shouldn't be cast into a suicidal depression just because I couldn't have a friggin' sandwich; so the next day I made some calls and wound up with an appointment with a therapist the following week.

And it helped. But after a few sessions, some of the things I had been forced to confront started taking over my mind. My thoughts were not my own, they were becoming unbearable to listen to. I could still go to work and do my show and that was OK, but when I was alone, all hell would break loose inside my skull.

So theygave mesomepillstomakemestopthinkinglikethis.

I have had problems with pills in the past, but I was assured that these were not addictive- it may take a some adjustment until they worked, but no habit would be formed. OK, I said.

Adjustment. I wrote about it later as a joke, but at one point I was convinced that I was ruining the planet just by being alive- not the human race in general, just me in particular , single-handedly destroying everything that is good in the Universe simply by existing.

There were other moments that I was totally at peace with the whole world, no matter how rotten or under-handed the activity I was engaged in. I was suffused with a sense of well-being that transcended ethical or moral thought. Everything was fine no matter how sordid or sleazy. I also found that my libido had shifed into overdrive and stayed there. This, combined with my impaired judgement, was a recipe for ugliness, and it wasn't long before I was trying to convince an angry cuckold that he sure was taking this hard, after all it is only sex, right? Looking back at that, I can't imagine a worse thing to have said- but it felt reasonable at the time.

He was getting ready to kill me and was big enough to do it, but somehow I managed to convince him that I was dangerously insane - which wasn't hard to do because it felt pretty much true at the time.

I escaped and the next day I called my doctor. He said unless I felt like I was at risk of hurting myself, I should stay on-course with the pills for the time being and the side effects would likely subside, if not stop. I was too embarrassed to admit that I was afraid that someone else was gonna hurt me, so I kept that to myself.

But I told my therapist about it. She pointed out that if I was embarrassed over what had transpired, then it sounded like I was feeling shame and that the false sense of propriety that I had described must be waning.

I sure hope so. Because I can't go through that again.

.

Not Always

2011-04-24T10:26:00.002-04:00

Ever hear this one?

If you fall off a horse, get right back on again.

That platitude can get you in trouble, especially if it's a crazy horse that's thrown you and it tramples you afterwards and you wind up with twelve broken bones, a ventilated spleen and traumatic brain injury as a result.

You should be getting into an ambulance at this point, but instead you cast about for another horse and lo, sure enough there's one right there, stirrups at the ready. Somehow, you climb on.

For a moment it feels like victory, but that is short-lived. As the endorphin rush wears off, you realize that this is not just another day at the races. Your new horse is not only a crazy horse, it is a crazy vampire horse with rabies, distemper, Hoof & Fang disease and wearing a bridle made of flaming barbed wire. If you are lucky, you'll fall off. If you're smart, you'll jump.

If you are lucky, your fall will be broken by a bed of music and you'll land safely atop a giant stack of old albums. You'll perform the lost ritual of listening and start feeling better, mending as the music touches you. Even the really bad songs will make you smile. Music will heal you.

Until you consider the damage it does to the environment. It dawns on you that all extant mass-produced recorded musical formats, i.e, records, tapes and CDs are made out of plastics, which are petroleum-based. There are millions and millions, maybe billions of these things out there- how much oil was used to make them and what happens to those records that don't pass the sniff-test of the 25-cent bins? They go into a landfill and live forever, is what. That is how 99.9% of bands will achieve immortality, by leaching into the aquifer.

You, on the other hand, will simply be buried under your own record collection, not to mention the tapes and old electronics in your closet. And what about all of the electricity that all of those bands- including yours- have used over the last fifty or sixty years? All of those amplifiers and PA systems suck enormous amounts of juice.

You could have done something productive with all of that electricity, like grow pot or electrocute prisoners, but no...you had to go and make a band instead. And what about touring? Think of all those vehicles, everything from private airliners to stolen Econo-Liners, all being used to shuttle energy-gobblin' noise merchants from venue to venue. Those all burn fuel.

Even your instruments are planet-killers. What are your guitars made of?

Wood and metal.

Wood is nothing more than the butchered carcass of a dead tree and you can't get metal without mining. And mining kills trees. The same trees that died for your album covers.

Don't forget the moral pollution either. You wonder why the music business sucks? It sucks for the same reason that our political system sucks, corruption and greed- the few good individuals who get involved tend to choke on their own vomit or die in small-plane crashes and the evil ones get all the cash.

So what can you do? You can't sing worth a damn and your instruments all have Gaea's blood on them. Perhaps you can try busking sans music, walking the streets with a shoebox in your hand, humming a little so people don't think you're a mime.

*****************************************

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB:4-23-2011

Podcast here.

Eleni Mandell- I Love Planet Earth

Steeleye Span- Edwin

Hot Tuna- Surphase Tension
Phaser. Gobs of phaser.

Roy Harper- Cherishing The Lonesome

Robbie Robertson- Ghost Dance

Jimi Hendrix- Little Wing

Lou Reed- A Gift

Peter Tosh- I'm The Toughest

Richard Thompson- Gypsy Love Songs

HuDost- Ergan Deda

HuDost "Ergen Deda" from North Avenue Studios on Vimeo.

Bob Dylan &The Band- Too Much of Nothing

Rickie Lee Jones- Weasel and the White Boy Cools

The Old Haunts- Poisonous Times

The Kinks- Live Life

Joan Armatrading-(I Love it When) You Call Me Names

Klark Kent- Don't Care

Belly- Judas My Heart

Stackridge- No One's More Important Than The Earth Worm

HuDost- Skeleton Key

Melanie- Got My Mojo Working

Al Stewart- Terminal Eyes

XTC- This World Over

HuDost- Skeleton Key

Bruce Cockburn- Peggy's Kitchen Wall

Snakefinger- Jesus Was a Leprechaun

It's A Beautiful Day- Bombay Calling

Jethro Tull- Singing All Day

Funkadelic- Trash-A-Go-Go

.

Train In Vain

2011-04-21T21:11:00.001-04:00

I should have known better than to accept Ellen's invitation. I was working as a temporary clerk at a law firm where Ellen was a senior partner. Part of my job was tracking down old court records and case files for her and she wound up being so impressed with my alphanumeric derring-do that she sent me an email inviting me to lunch. I guess she must have won the case or something, because her email had smiley-face emoticons all over it, which was kinda weird to see coming from an old lady.

And Ellen was really old, like maybe forty or even forty-five, at least twenty years older than me. It was like being invited to lunch by one of my mother's friends, a neighbor that Mom always half-jokingly warned me not to take candy from. I always wondered what she meant by that. Or I used to, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I mean, I sure was glad to be getting a free lunch and all, but I was afraid that my girlfriend Gloria or one of her friends from school would see me out with Ellen and think that I was dating some old chick. Plus,at work they make me wear khakis and long-sleeves that
cover up my tattoos, so it would be a double-whammy of uncool if some hot art-major chicks saw me.

I considered the risk of being spotted, trying to do that 'look before you leap' thing that Dad always yells about, except he says it like 'look before you fucking leap, you stupid piece of shit' and we aren't allowed to cuss at work, so I tried to keep my thinking clean.

After some pre-leap looking, I decided I'd be safe as long as we didn't go to Starbucks, since half my class seems to work there, including Gloria's best friend Dan. Dan is a big, good-looking guy, but he's gay, so I don't get upset when she kisses him or stays at his house for a week or two. They have never come out and told me, but I'm pretty sure that Gloria just pretends to date Dan so people don't know he's gay. It works too, because I think I am the only one who has figured it out.

Like, Gloria isn't really my official girlfriend right quite yet, I just know that she really digs me and that one day we'll hook up for sure.

See, the last time my band, The Sickening Thud, played out, Gloria was the only person in the whole town that came out to see us play- she was the only person in the whole club except the manager and the soundman- that's how much she digs me and my band. She even came out from behind the bar so that she could listen to us play while she stacked the chairs on top of the tables and I bet anything that she woulda listened to our whole set if the the douche-bag soundman hadn't come up to the stage and told us that he was closing early because there was no audience and that we owed him fifty bucks and that it would be an extra hundred bucks if we wanted to finish our set.

We were so busy packing up our gear that Gloria didn't have a chance to make her move on me, so she left before we did, which kinda sucked. Plus it cost me 25 bucks because me and our singer Matt are the only dudes in the band with jobs so we wind up paying for everything.

Anyway, fate would have it that me and Gloria had about a zillion mutual friends on Facebook, so I sent her a request and she friended me right back the next week! So now all I needed to do was let nature take its course. Unless I got busted being seen with Ellen. Not that there was anything dirty going on, but it would look funny, ya know what I mean?

Well, I didn't have to worry, because Ellen took me to The Open Flue, which I think sounds like a cool bandname but is actually an expensive high-class restaurant. I had applied for a job there during my freshman year, but they wouldn't hire me because of my tattoos unless I wanted a job as valet. But then they turned me down for that, too. They said it was because of my driving record, but I think it was really discrimination on account of my tats.

I gotta admit, the food was top-notch excellent stuff. I asked for a hamburger but Ellen ordered a steak for me instead. I told the waiter that I would like french fries and he told me that they did not normally serve french fries, but that he could get the cook to prepare some for me. Pretty classy, eh? And it was yummy too. I had a coke, but Ellen had at least three glasses of wine. She really was reminding of Mom's friend by then.

Ellen told me that she had won the case- it was something to do with a railroad- and the client had given her a train-set as a gift and that I looked really strong and healthy and would I mind coming over to her house to help her put her choo-choo back on track? I didn't know how strong you had to be to put together a toy train, but I guess I musta looked like Superman or something to her on account of her being old and maybe drunk too.

I also figured she meant for me to help her after work or something, but it turned out she meant right then, so after she paid for the meal, we took her Jaguar - that same one- way over to the Belle View part of town, which is big-time rich people territory. She had a giant house with a circle driveway that had a dancing bird statue in a fountain inside the circle, which was cool even if the water in it looked a little green and mossy and wasn't really a fountain, since it wasn't moving.

Inside her house was like the inside of a house you would see in one of those boring dental waiting-room kind of magazines, except it isn't boring in real life, it is more like scary- like what if I accidentally broke something or got something dirty or something like that happened ? I'd be broke forever paying for it.

Ellen said the train was in her dressing room, which had open floor space to set it up on. I figured a table would have been better, but she is my boss and technically I was still at work, so I said ok.

Sure enough, there was a really super-deluxe train set still in the box. It was sitting on top of a dresser drawer. Most dudes probably don't even know what a model train set is, much less how to set one up, but Dad had one and I sorta knew how they worked. I placed the box on the floor, knelt down and looked at the contents. The track was a simple oval loop, it would be easy to snap together.

"Can you handle it?" , she asked. I told her sure I could , no problem.

" Great. I need to change clothes, so don't turn around."

No problem, the train would keep me busy.

But she must've forgot that there was a double-sized wall mirror directly opposite me and that I could see her in the reflection as she undressed. I noticed how slow and careful-like she was taking her clothes off and wondered if she was afraid of wrinkling them and that my mom had some tricks for getting wrinkles out of clothes, but the train distracted me and I didn't pass on mom's wrinkle advice or look at the mirror for a few minutes even when Ellen told me that I had a nice ass.

How could she tell through my khakis? I guess she was just being nice.

"You can look now", she said. I looked.

Ellen didn't look like a lawyer anymore. She was wearing a black shiny outfit that looked like something Catwoman would wear, except a lot less so. I'm embarrassed to admit that it gave me a boner just looking her. I stayed kneeling down on the rug, facing away from her so he wouldn't see me like that.

Not to be to gross or anything, but khakis are lightweight fabric and don't hide boners very well so I didn't want to stand up right then, except she asked me to help light her cigarette for her and took a look right at my privates. Then she put here hand down there and I'm not really gonna say much more because I feel like I really let Gloria down over what happened.

The next time I see Gloria, I will have to confess about what happened and ask her forgiveness and hope that she still might want to go on a date or something even though I'd cheated on her before we were a couple. Love is funny like that.

But Ellen kept making me do stuff and I kinda couldn't stop even though I kinda felt embarrassed about all the 'stuff' , Eventually she fell asleep and I noticed that she'd finished two whole bottles of wine since we got there, so I figured she'd be asleep for a long time and I could finally finish setting up the train. That is when I looked at the clock.

It was nine o'clock and I had to have Dad's car back home by ten and Dads car was still parked at work. I tried waking Ellen up, but she just mumbled some dirty words and went back to sleep.

I should have looked before I leapt, but instead I wound up fishing the keys to her Jag out of her purse . I was going to drive it to work, get dad's car, drive dad's car home and then walk back to work and get Ellen's car. Hopefully she would still be asleep and I could finish putting her train together. The big problem was that instead of driving from work back to Ellen's house, I wound up hitting a mailbox about a half-mile down the road from there, which is where you found me.

If you let me make another phone call , I'm sure Ellen will be awake by now and she will clear this whole thing up.

.

The Rocket

2011-04-19T21:11:00.001-04:00

Alec Long missed his mother. On the summer between the fifth and sixth grade of school, Alec had traveled from his grandparent's home in Maryland to visit her for the first time since she had moved away.

Alec's parents had divorced when he was still a baby and after the split, his mother Gina had moved Out West to live with an older man named Carol. Apparently his mom had married Carol years ago, but that marriage had been short-lived and the only thing Gina had to show for it was the rather old and battered Mercedes sedan that Alec was currently sitting in.

The car itself was parked on a desolate stretch of private dirt road somewhere on the sprawling Wyoming ranch of Mr. Simm, a cattleman who owned the bar where Alec's mom served drinks. Mr. Simm's bar was called the Jolly Roger and sported a faux 'pirate' theme. There was a fake pirate ship in the parking lot which Alec thought was funny because the nearest ocean seemed to be at least ten million miles away from the tedious desert landscape surrounding Evanston, the little oilfield town where his mother had settled after her second divorce.

That is stupid, he had laughed to himself, there aren't any pirates in the desert.

Alec didn't like boats.

Most of Alec's young life had been spent with his father's parents, as his father Jeff had taken a job as a steward on a cruise ship two days before Alec's premature birth and was, as his grandfather was fond of saying, lost at sea, although he wasn't truly lost like a Robinson Crusoe shipwreck; Jeff just didn't come home very often and when he did , he tended to show up drunk and stay that way until he left. Which was usually sooner than later.

Last Christmas Jeff had given his son a small bag of brightly-colored toy plastic dinosaurs and claimed that he had brought them special all the way from China, see, it says so right on the bag. Alec knew better but he had been so glad to see his father that he didn't mention seeing those same dinosaurs last week, pegged to the wall at the local 7-11, right next to the store's comic-book rack.

Those same dinosaurs were keeping Alec company as he waited for his mother to return. She had followed Mr. Simm's pickup truck as it drove over the half-graveled road, the Mercedes lurching crazily as it bounced on the uneven surface, headlights casting frenzied searchlight beams into the plume of dust left in Mr. Simm's wake. Mr. Simm is always in a hurry, Gina had told her son, but this car can't go that fast on this road.

After a few miles of turbulent driving, they saw the headlights of Mr. Simm' s Ford. He had turned around a few hundred feet ahead of them and stopped. His headlights flashed twice and then went dark. Gina stopped her car, turned off the engine and opened her door.

Wait here, honey. I need to talk to Mr. Simm for a little bit. I brought your comic-books with us- they are in the backseat, so sit tight until I get back, OK?

Alec wanted to tell her that it wasn't OK. He wanted to tell her that he was scared, that it was dark outside and he couldn't see anything and that if she left now he knew that she would never come back for him. He wanted to tell her that he knew dinosaurs didn't really come special from China just for him. He wanted to scream.

OK, Mom, he said.

Alec clambered into the back and rummaged around in the small red cooler Gina always traveled with, pushing aside the ghastly yellow cans of Coors beer until he finally came up with a chilly can of Coke. He opened it and carefully placed the curled metal tab in the car's ashtray. One of his schoolteachers had told Alec that baby squirrels often strangled on metal pull-tabs that careless people threw out of their car windows. Alec didn't want any part of that.

He had already read the comics at least a dozen times but there wasn't much else to do, so he flicked on the dim overhead lamp and started reading The Amazing Spider-Man again. It was the issue where Peter Parker discovers that the evil Green Goblin is actually his best friend's father. In it, the Green Goblin accidentally gets killed while fighting Spider-Man and now everyone-including Peter's best friend Harry, the New York police and Peter's sickly Aunt May- blames Spider-Man. Peter has to listen to his friends and family talk about how rotten Spider-Man is, when the whole time Peter is Spider-Man. Alec sometimes felt as if his own family secretly hated him. When he thought about his parents, he always wanted to cry, although he also wanted to be strong, even if it was the secret kind of strength like what Peter Parker had, the kind of strength that no one else could ever know about. So most of the time he didn't cry, even when he felt like it.

The comic story made Alec sad so he turned to his favorite part of the book, which was an advertisement for Estes model rockets. One of Alec's classmates owned a model rocket and had taken Alec out on a launch not long ago and ever since then, Alec had been asking his grandparents for a rocket of his own. He wanted a Saturn model, it was excitingly complicated-looking, with multiple engines that would ignite in stages, just like real thing. In his imagination, he painted the rocket in red and blue patches with black webs , just like Spider-Man's costume, and named it AF-15, after the first-ever Spidey book, Amazing Fantasy #15.

Maybe you can get one for Christmas, Granpa had said. But not sooner, we don't have money for trifles. Ask your mother when you get Out West. Maybe she has triflin' money.

After Alec arrived in Wyoming, Gina asked him if there was anything special he wanted. He showed her his tattered mail-order rocket catalog with the Saturn model circled in red magic marker. Gina whistled.

That is a lot of money. How about ice cream? Do you like ice cream?

He was ashamed of it, but he started to cry when Gina asked him if he liked ice cream. He really wanted that rocket and he hadn't seen his mom in forever and she couldn't even give him the rocket he had been dreaming of for so long. And suddenly Gina was crying too and Alec didn't know why , only that the grown-ups he knew seemed to cry a lot more than he did , and he was just a kid. She hugged him and said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry in a whisper he could barely hear.

I am like Spidey, I am sad and everybody I love hates the real me, but I am strong and I don't cry. But he did cry.

Later, Gina told him that she had talked to Mr. Simm and that he was going to help her buy the rocket for him, the best rocket in the whole catalog, with extra engines, parachutes and decals and a deluxe electronic ignition kit that used a large battery to light the missile, not the cheap and unreliable fuses like Alec's friend had used.

Alec didn't know why Mr. Simm wanted them to drive all the way out to nowhere to talk about rockets, but the grownups in Alec's life were always going off to talk to each other in secret places, usually right before they dumped him off with a relative or family friend for a while. Alec didn't want to live with Mr. Simm, rocket or no rocket. He waited in the car, wondering where he might be tomorrow.

For a while, Alec's dinosaurs had an imaginary argument over which toy would be the first one to ride the rocket into space. That lasted for a few minutes and then he looked again at the rocket advertisement while he finished his Coke. Time passed until he had to step out of the car to pee.

After he was done he stared through the moonless night toward the low shadowy bulk of Mr. Simm's Ford. Without thinking, he crouched and started creeping slowly towards it, walking just off to the side of the road. As he neared it, he could hear faint strains of country-music coming from the cab He couldn't see inside from where he stood, so he snuck closer and stood on his tip-toes, peering diagonally across the truck bed and through the rear cabin window. He remained there for a few minutes.

When he got back to the Mercedes, his mouth was parched dry and he felt like he might choke on the spongy mass of his own tongue. He reached into the cooler for another Coke, but there weren't any, just a half-dozen Coors lazing in the dirty, icy water. Alec had tasted beer before, of course, and found it disgusting, but there was nothing else, so he popped the top of the nearest can. Out of habit, he placed the ring in the ashtray, then he steeled himself and took a small sip, then another, larger one.

It tasted very good to him.

.

One Chapter

2011-04-14T18:38:00.001-04:00

It was a terrible plan, I thought to myself as I thunked ketchup out of the glass bottle and onto my mother's old wig. This ketchup wouldn't fool anyone and the only people who might actually stop would be the police, and what would I do with a stolen police car anyway? They probably had some secret cop trick to keep their cars from getting stolen and I'd just get caught again. That wouldn't suit me anymore than it would suit the court, which would be of the adult variety the next time I saw one, me having just turned eighteen a few weeks ago.

I was pretty sure I had some more trips to court in my future, but right now I had bigger problems, mainly getting out of town before one of Dobbie's thugs found me. About the only way I could afford to travel would be the bus and Dobbie knew that; someone would be watching the bus station, so that was out. Hitchhiking always makes me feel vulnerable and I hate feeling vulnerable, so I decided that stealing a car for my getaway would be a lot safer and easier than relying on the roadside kindness of strangers.

Like most of my plans, it didn't start off being terrible, it just wound up that way. I mean, stealing a car is a pretty sensible thing to do if you don't have one and you need one, but a lot of how sensible it is depends on how you steal it. Mostly it's easier if you steal a car that doesn't have anyone else in it, but I wanted a car that was already on the highway and that is where the canvas rucksack came in. In it , I had the wig, a bottle of ketchup, a couple packs of matches, a large Mason jar full of kerosene and about twenty pounds of bloody pork bones that I stole from the renderer's barrel in the alley behind the butcher's shop. The mannequin wouldn't fit in the bag, so I had to un-peg the legs and arms from the fake plastic torso and put them in a cardboard box that wasn't so much heavy as it was awkward and difficult to walk through the woods with. So you can see how my plan was heading towards terrible by this point.

Usually I did OK without a plan. Like how I got the mannequin.

I was killing time, feeling old and lost after my birthday, walking around town for the first time in years when I stumbled across one of those new 'shopping malls' , which is like a fenceless prison compound with a cluster of large single-story flat-topped buildings that are surrounded by parking lots and divided into lots of cells, only they aren't really cells, they are stores and shops, with a big two-story Montgomery Ward department store looming over them all like a lopsided guard tower, except instead of guards it was full of girls my age who were there voluntarily.

I imagined those loser girls in their matching frocks, getting paid a fifty cents an hour to sell lipstick and skin balms to saggy old ladies who couldn't look young again even if they had a time machine. It made me want to shoplift but I wasn't wearing shoplifting clothes, just jeans and light blue t-shirt. I had no large pockets and no purse.

I hate purses. If you ever see me with a purse, it's probably full of stolen clothes or stolen drugs. Or both. And I probably stole the purse too, which, if you think about it, is a hell of a lot better than buying one because the ones you buy don't come with all the neat stuff that the 'used' ones have inside- one time I found a loaded .22 in a bag I snatched from an old lady in downtown Cincinnati. I guess she thought the gun would make her safer from people like me. But I hate guns so I traded it for mescaline. I hate mescaline too, but I didn't know that then.

So I walked around behind the Montgomery Wards store where a large loading dock faced a patch of woods. There weren't any people on the dock, but I saw a green-painted metal door standing open on the far end of the platform , so I hopped up and peeked in. There was a large stockroom area on one side and on the other side a small hallway led to what looked like a set of offices. I heard voices coming from the office area but saw no one. Right inside the door was a folding metal chair where some counter-girl had dropped her blue sales smock across the back. I took it and put it on. The red plastic name tag said 'Norma' in white stenciled letters, which I thought was funny since my name is Jean and people always told me I looked like Marilyn Monroe, which is nice thing if a woman tells you but not always so nice when a boy does. Mostly, boys say that to me because they want to make me sticky. And I hate that, so I wear my hair plain and never touch makeup except when I'm stealing it or trying to look like someone that isn't me.

I was tying the little string on the back of the ugly blue apron when two men in white shirts and thin black ties came out of one of the offices and walked right past me without seeming to notice I was there. After they passed, one of them- a flabby, pear-shaped man who was sweating just from walking- turned around and looked at me.

"Break time is only five minutes, sweetheart. We don't pay you to stand around. Now get your pretty little behind out there and finish clearing section five. We need the old dolls off the floor. And no more wearing dungarees to work", he finished.

Old dolls? I was curious so I followed the rude fat man through the stockroom doors as he gestured towards a cluster of stripped-down female mannequins in the nearby corner. Old dolls.

They weren't nearly as heavy as a real person, so I picked one up and carried it back into the stockroom, out through the open door, across the loading dock and into the woods behind the store, where I hid it until it got dark outside and we came to pick it up in Dobbie's car. That was back when Dobbie and I were still friends, like maybe two weeks ago. So that's how I got the store dummy.

The ketchup was an unnaturally bright red against the blond wig and the whole mess didn't look very convincing on the mannequin. Fake blood on fake hair on fake body. I guessed maybe that it would work for my purposes, although I chickened out when it came to dumping the red sauce on my own blonde hair, which I had tried to grow long but was now hacked off , messily and unevenly just above my shoulders. I had done it myself earlier that morning and I'd been in a hurry at the time so it looked pretty bad, even compared to what we got at Watertown Home for Girls.

I wish I'd thought to bring the scissors with me. I wasn't really in the mood for cutting myself but what I was planning on doing was pretty crazy and cutting someone else would make things even more exciting. A lot better than this ketchup could ever hope to be, that's for sure.

When I was in the Watertown Home I had to spend some of my afternoons talking to adults who asked a lot of questions, most of which weren't really about what I had done and why I was there. Except they were about that, it was just that the questions were in disguise, sorta.

Like, sometimes the questions would really be pictures instead of questions and at first it seemed like all the answers I gave were the wrong ones. I don't think it was fair, it isn't my fault that they kept showing me ink-blobs that looked like my parents burning and screaming in a pool of bloody fire. I don't know where they found those pictures but it kinda shows that even though I was the inmate, the so-called doctors were really the sick ones. After what I'd done and been through, you'd think they'd show me pictures of flowers and butterflies, not horrible blobs like the ones they had put on the table in front of me. No wonder I have nightmares.

I don't really remember deciding to do it, or even doing it really, but one day the docs came to my ward and they asked me how long I planned on staying quiet. It seemed like a familiar question, I think maybe they asked me the same thing every day but I wasn't really paying attention so I'm not sure.

"Long enough", I answered. I don't know why I said that, but they seemed pleased and told me it was a breakthrough because I hadn't spoken for six months. I hadn't? That surprised me.

Like I said, I don't really recall being quiet for so long but after my breakthrough I decided to tell the doctors that their pictures looked like butterflies and flowers and they called that a breakthrough too.

Before long, one of them confided to me that I'd been recommended for EST- which is like being electrocuted to make you stop being crazy- but since I was having so many breakthroughs, they'd decided to postpone that indefinitely. There were a lot of people on the outside, she told me, who thought EST was a bad idea and that it messed up people's brains and if I was lucky, it would be banned before my turn came and the postponement wouldn't matter anyway. The way she said it made me feel like she was one of those people on the outside, and that I should be relieved that she thought EST was a bad idea. It turned out that she was right and by the time I turned 18, the docs had pretty much stopped using it, although the table they used was still there, waiting threateningly in the scary basement room that no one I knew could ever quite remember being in, no matter how many times they were taken there.

My Guitar Wants To Heal Your Karma

2011-04-05T20:20:00.000-04:00

This year I played an April Fool's joke on myself. I decided that I would stop punishing myself for things that aren't my fault and reward myself just for being alive. That might not sound like a very funny prank and it really wasn't, nor was it intended to be; it was meant as a parting shot at a hateful demon that I hope is cast out of my head forever.

It's been a long time going, that demon; my exercise in exorcism began in a hospital ER nearly six years ago and ended in a guitar shop last Sunday, where I bought myself the reward pictured above.

It is not as if I don't still love my old guitar. I do. But I need some time away from it and its rather demanding and exotic nature.

A new guitar is like an exciting new lover, it is difficult to keep your hands off and in the first days of your new relationship you will most likely find yourself sneaking into work a wee bit late in the morning, if not calling in sick altogether.

Anyway.

Those of you who know me probably think the demon I refer to is alcoholism , but it is not. I've not really struggled with my alcoholism at all, to tell the truth. My experience in hospital was so painful and traumatic that I knew, were I to survive, I would never drink again.

No, this demon was born the day my childhood ended and although it has certainly contributed to my career of addictions, it itself is not an addiction. I wasn't molested or sold into child slavery or anything like that, nor did I torture animals or any such horrid thing, my trauma was emotional and intellectual- well, as intellectual as a precocious child can be, anyway. I hardly ever think about it, and although there are people in my real life that I could tell, I'd just rather not.

So I told my therapist instead. I spilled it all out in a few minutes, it is a short, ugly story and telling it made me cry. I figured my shrink'd be jaded and hard to faze after twenty years of listening to crazy people, but she told me that , coupled with what she already knew about my past, that it was amazing that I could function at all, much less thrive and be happy. But I was, and she was unabashedly impressed and told me so. I could swear I saw tears in her eyes as well.

I do have friends who have been very supportive of my 'new' self, but hearing it from an objective professional really helped my self-confidence. Friends will almost always say nice things to you, but your therapist won't. Some lessons were painful, but worth the pain for the insights and glimmers of hope. That feeling of worth and value.

That burst of self-confidence has served me well already. I don't know how long any of it will last, but I'm in a good place at work and I have found that I have a new friend in the upper management level, one who really likes me. I mean really likes me. Job security for me - as long as they keep their job, anyway.

That Thing That Was has been exposed to light and has lost its crippling, guilt-inducing grip on me. I'm stronger than sorrow and better than guilt and by Godzilla, I deserve something nice for a change.

In Like A Lamb, Out Like A Texas-Sized Piece of Sharp-Horned Shit

2011-03-30T18:57:00.002-04:00

Lately I have been feeling as if I were a small beanbag trapped inside of a pinball machine. Each morning I am catapulted out of the relatively cozy tunnel of my dreams and onto life's wildly uneven playing field, into a world stroboscopically lit and surrounded by cacophonous chaos, with me getting hit from all angles over and over again; thumped painfully from everywhere to nowhere, detachedly absorbing the impacts and changing shape slightly to accommodate the cumulative blows but offering little real resistance, all attention focused on a desperate attempt not to disappear into the dark hole waiting at the bottom of things.

Not that everything has been uniformly bad, just a bit fast, jarring and tilted. Stressful with Extra Balls.

Stress can hurt you. Last week my right arm started having muscle spasms that literally knocked me to the floor in blinding agony. I almost went to the ER once I was able to stand up but the pain soon settled down into a steady, constant ache and I decided to wait. In the morning I saw my doctor and he gave me a shot and some pills, including some steroids for inflammation and Valium to help take the edge off the steroid-induced mood-swings.

In hindsight, I don't think that was a very good idea, the steroids wreaked havoc with me emotionally; the Valium worked long enough for me to run a few errands and do my radio show, but by mid-afternoon a black and roiling cloud of uncomfortable misery had enveloped me and I spent the rest of the evening in a flummoxed, fumbling state of near-uselessness. I was torn between the despair of irrevocable loneliness and the deep, dark fear that if I did have human companionship, I'd break down, collapse and suffocate them with the sheer urgency of my need to not be alone.

At other times I'd feel OK for a few minutes and put on my shoes, maybe open the door. I think I walked around the block once or twice just to prove that I could, but it is possible that I simply imagined doing so.

Due to some server issues, I couldn't even get my podcast to upload, which shouldn't have been enough to break me down, but was. My radio show is hard work and sometimes it feels like it is the only good thing I have to share with anyone and now some distant computer malfunction was going to cut the last pound of good flesh I had left- at that moment I felt that the collective malevolence of the Universe was funneled into a firehose and blasted straight into my face. Everything that exists, exists to torment me. Of course, in my head I knew that is utter rubbish-but when the miserables kick in, the intellect checks out.

That was a terrible feeling; it reminded me of how I used to feel when I drank. I'd often feel a desperate need to be with someone, to belong somewhere, but I didn't have anyone to be with or anywhere to go...well, that isn't entirely true. There were people who would have been glad to see me if I could have managed to sober up, but I always wound up turning my back on them and seeking the false comfort of familiar-strange drunks in familiar-strange bars. Underneath it all, I knew that I was too fucked-up to be around my real friends, but I didn't have the strength or dignity to care about what a mess I'd made of myself, so I’d usually choose the rather mercenary company of drinking partners over that of real friends-the kind of friends who might be concerned if they saw me in such a wasted state.

Anyway.

By Sunday I felt so horrible that I could barely function, every simple task seemed huge and complex and my short, comfortless naps never seemed to last long enough. I'd turn the computer on, hoping for...I don't know...something, anything that would help connect me with another person, cause or concept, but simultaneously dreading the overwhelming responsibility of communication. I had no words to write and no songs to play, yet I wanted a reader, an audience, a duet partner, a shrink -someone, anyone.

Anything I said could and would be used against me, so what to say?

What to do?

Instead of counting sheep, I started reviewing every word I'd ever uttered and devising new and horrific ways to use them against myself.

I lay on my back all night doing this, eyes open, staring at nothing until it was time to get up and get dressed. I lingered under the hot water, it felt really good on my aching bicep and the relief that came with it almost lulled me into thinking that it might be a good day after all.

But as soon as I got to work, my boss really pissed me off by screwing up my paycheck and I was so strung-out on pills and no-sleep that I nearly went into a blind, terminal rage over it. I wrote him a pissy email explaining that money is the only reason that I have a job; remove it and I have no incentive to stay at work. Boss replied that it was too late to fix this payroll, but he’d make it up to me later.

Fuck that. Fuck you with a Universal Funnel, you fat officious prick.

So I powered down my computer, turned off the lights in my cube and went home for the day. I didn't quit or say anything to anyone, I just left. Eventually my boss called and left a voicemail for me to call him "first thing in the morning".

Whatever.

My experience tells me that taking a principled stand at work is effectively the same thing as quitting, but my current job has been the exception. Our client loves me and if I'm gone a huge account gets placed at-risk, plus I'm the only employee who can understand the client's database, so firing me at this time probably wouldn't work very well. But I'm no longer satisfied at work and that bothers me, since I have to spend so much time there on account of not being naturally-born rich.

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Next: Fortune, Glorious Fortune

No Warning

2011-03-27T10:17:00.000-04:00

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 3-26-2011

Download Show here

Or listen below...after about an hour I regain my ability to speak.

Golden Palominos- Gun

Tranquility Bass- Soldier's Sweetheart

Old Canes- Under

Warren Zevon- Detox Mansion

Stills- Young Band- 12/8 Blues

Wire- I am the Fly

Electric Flag- Earthquake Country

T.Rex- Ride A White Swan

Rare Earth- Eleanor Rigby

Fleetwood Mac- Green Manalishi

Mothers of Invention- Absolutely Free

Hot Tuna- Song For The Fire Maiden

Papa John Creach- String Jet Rock

Captain Beefheart- Trust Us (Take9)

Pretty Things- There Will Never Be Another Day

Jimi Hendrix- Castles Made Of Sand

Todd Rundgren- Eastern Intrigue

Taxi To The Ocean- Flag On The Moon

Klaatu- Perpetual Motion Machine

Dare Dukes- Kick and Holler

Greg Lake- It Hurts

Faces- Had Me A Real Good Time

Miles Davis- Saturday Miles

Snakefinger- Don't Lie

Lou Reed- Vicious

Babe Ruth- Fistful of Dollars

It's A Beautiful Day- Hot Summer Day (live)

Peter Blegvad- White

HuDost- Lonely Ship

Two Dreams, One Night

2011-03-24T19:50:00.001-04:00

My eyes fill sockets that weren't there a moment before; expanding into flesh, bone, skin and now I'm just one body in a crowd of bodies, all walking up a long, steep grade towards a tall banana-yellow building in the distance. Everyone in the crowd looks familiar to me but I recognize no one as we steadily walk upwards. I'm somewhat relieved to find that I'm wearing clothes, although I can't really distinguish what they are , nor can I tell what the people around me are wearing- robes? Ponchos?

Fashion isn't important here but something else is and I'm trying to figure it out by listening to the rustle of the crowd as a murmured, whispery rhythm passes to and fro amongst the walking throng.

She's here. Who? I don't know. She's here. Who? I don't know. She's here. Who? I don't know.

I find that we are much closer to the building now and it appears to be a rather ordinary-looking apartment building, six stories high with two adjoining balconies on each floor. The people are walking in through a double door at ground level and they seem to be spiraling into one apartment, following the balcony to the next one on the same floor and, after a few moments, emerging on the balcony of the floor above. There must be thousands of people in there, how do they all fit?

She's here. Who? I don't know. She's here. Who? I don't know. She's here. Who? I don't know.

As we get even nearer, the droning chant changes, getting faster and louder, more excited-sounding.

She's here! She's here! She's here!

I look at the impossible people walking into this impossible building and for the first time I see that the rear of the building extends into a towering stone cliff that stretches high into the sky. No one in the crowd is looking back but I do, stopping and turning to face the faceless climbers. They part as they pass, no one has features with which to register emotion, all forms and faces are rounded, smooth, indistinguishable from one another. Even lacking mouths, they cry out.

She's here! She's here! She's here!

I don't need to ask or wonder anything at this point. I know who she is and why we are here and I don't want to join the crowd in their pilgrimage to meet her. That can wait until I'm ready and right now I'm not, so I walk against the mob and no one tries to stop me.

I awake with a great thirst and an even greater sense of relief, not of escape but of comfort. I've left a glass of water on my desk , so I get out of bed and swallow it in one long draught. Slaked, I go back to bed and drift off almost immediately.

The bartender is a sharp-featured brunette with long, wavy hair. I'm struck by the color of her eyes as she pours me a cup of coffee. One is deep blue and the other is a rich, emerald green.

I know her. She knows me. We are in what looks like an upscale hotel bar, a wall of expensive booze spreads out behind her and somehow she knows me well enough to serve me black coffee without having to ask. She pushes the heavy white mug to me and greets me by name.

She doesn't tell me this, but somehow I know that for now, her name is Michelle. This is strange to me, names are not often used in this place.

There's a young blond woman stocking a beer cooler at the other end of the otherwise empty bar. She turns toward us.

"Hey Michelle", she calls out, "show him your songs."

Michelle blushes and I ask her if she's a musician. She tells me no, not really, but she has a lot of songs that she wishes she could play. Right now they are just poems, she admits, but would I take a look anyway?

Of course I will.

Her handwriting is neat but tiny and I have to remove my glasses and bend down to the notebook she has placed in front of me...the words enter my eyes and go to strange places inside me, they are wonderful although I cannot seem to read them. I look up to say something to Michelle and I'm surprised to find that she has bent to read as well , her face a hairsbreadth from mine. Our lips touch briefly as we look up, and startled, we both back up a half-step, waiting for a reaction from the other.

I smile. She smiles back and I can't take my eyes off of hers as she bends closer, watching me with those beautiful two-colored orbs as she turns another page. I want to ask her if she can sing but I am sure that she can, so I ask for another coffee instead and she laughs just a little.

It's already full, she says. And it is.

I want to stay here forever but that doesn't happen.

.

Can't Spell 'Vacuum' Without Two of You

2011-03-19T19:05:00.001-04:00

I'm not even sure who I am anymore. For the length of a grueling three-day business trip, I was Mr. Together, a real cool cucumber who doesn't sweat or worry no matter how much pressure he's under or how dire the situation is. Mr. Together always has a kind word for his peers and he's astonishingly calm in the face of other's panic.When Mr. T tells you that things are gonna be OK, you can take it to the bank.

I have no idea who this Mr. T guy is; the me that I'm used to seeing is the one who can be brought to a state of tearful incapacitation by the faintest first note of a lightly strummed minor chord and paralyzed with sorrow by a Facebook eulogy to a virtual stranger's dog. A real sap.

I expected some sort of depressive transformation once the job was done and I had time to grossly misjudge just how truly awful my life is. On the long ride home Friday, I stared through the window of my train, waiting for the misery to kick in. I was braced for the expected emotional impact of my own wayward thoughts, not exactly tense but not exactly mellow either.

After a half-hour had passed without any nascent despair, I ventured to the 'Cafe Car' for a cup of Amtrak coffee. If anything will make you miserable, it's a cup of Amtrak coffee coupled with the permeating, rubbery smell of microwaved cheeseburgers and the passengers who eat such fare- but this time the java tasted OK and the woman in front of me in line smelled good, like clean sheets and warm sun. Perplexed, I returned to my seat and waited for the train to derail. It didn't.

When I finally got to the station, I was surprised to find that I hadn't left my car lights on and that my battery wasn't dead. The sight of four fully inflated tires failed to inspire the slightest bit of anxiety. The car started right up and the late-night traffic was light on the short and shockingly uneventful drive home.

Home held no trauma, it was just as I left it, save for the not-unexpected presence of my imaginary friend Fancy. She was sitting on my couch, thumbing through my journal.

"Hi", I said.

"The Universe lives inside of you and what appear to be the pinpoint lights of distant stars are in fact the faintly glimmering last rays of your lost hopes reflecting off the tiny yet infinitely broken shards of your shattered dreams and scattered personalities", replied Fancy.

"Says you", I said by way of clever retort.

"No, you said that-well, you wrote it. It's right here after this awful poem..."

I snatched the notebook away from her, looked at the pages and read a few lines to myself.

"Wow. This really is dreadful."

Fancy nodded and we laughed together until she was gone.

________________________________________________________

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, MARCH 19, 2011

Hot Tuna - Water Song

Planet Gong- Floating Anarchy

Gong- Oily Way/Outer Temple

ELP- Trilogy

Genesis- Can-Utlity and the Coastliners

Be Bop Deluxe- Japan

Stranglers- Nuclear Device

Stranglers- Something Better Change

Jeannine Hebb- Things Haven't Been So Bad Lately

Gary Numan- Engineers

Dave Cousins- Tears and Pavan

The Duhks- Mighty Storm

Lost in the Trees- Song For The Painter

Patti Smith- Wave

Allan Coberly- Fall and Reflect (demo version)

Monday Machines- Ruined Morning

Cursive- I Couldn't Love You

Golden Palominos- Faithless Heart

Capt. Beefheart- Same Old Blues

Peter Green - Fool No More

Ten Years After- Tomorrow I'll Be Out of Town

Robert Fripp- I May Not Have Enough of Me but I've Had Enough of You

Ozric Tentacles- Thyroid

3/19/2011 Podcast download here.

Archives here.

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Great In Comparison

2011-03-16T21:56:00.001-04:00

The Past

The business trip I'm on is not off to an especially good start but I am going to refrain from referring to the situation as a 'total meltdown'.That term is reserved for the real thing.

I'm sitting in my hotel, enjoying the luxury of cable TV and all I can seem to watch is ongoing coverage of the horrific confluence of disasters that have befallen the people of Japan. There are other things on TV, but I cannot seem to pull away from the news channels despite (or perhaps because of) my rising dread, sorrow and anxiety.

All of the TV experts agree: there is no good outcome possible with the nuclear meltdowns, the only thing left to determine is the severity of the catastrophe. Japan is a small and crowded island and can hardly afford to have a huge swath of coastal land rendered uninhabitable for decades.

And then there was the quake and ensuing tsunami. By now I'm sure you've seen footage- entire valley towns completely destroyed, boats, cars and shattered homes carried miles inland...there were people in many of those vehicles and structures. Thousands and thousands of people. All gone.

Japan is affluent, has a very strong society and is in good standing with the world community, these are huge positives when it comes to disaster remediation- but I wonder how many international aid workers and volunteers will be scared away by the all-too real threat of uncontrolled radioactivity?

Meanwhile back in my relatively insignificant life, things seem to be going more or less OK. I've started therapy and I like my therapist. Initially, she explained psychiatric terms and concepts to me by using metaphors and symbology and not the actual terminology- I knew the technical words for what she was describing and I think I surprised her a bit with that knowledge, but I told her that I preferred symbols and metaphor,that it was much easier for me to get the true meaning that way since that is how I tend to see things anyway. I won't get into it here, but none of the words she applied to me were "psychotic" or "sociopath" or "incurable", so I felt a little better for that.

And I have a decent job for a change. 14 months at the same job! Last year I started as a file clerk and right now I'm sitting in a swank downtown D.C. hotel with a belly-full of expense account dinner and fancydessert, resting up for tomorrow, which will involve a massive system tear-down and re-build and probably a few more trips up here for me. I like getting out of my cubicle for a few days and this hotel is far nicer than home, so I can't complain about that...but the coming work is impossible. It'll be the fourth such mission I've been sent on and I haven't failed yet, so I guess I'll figure something out tomorrow. It'll work.

It's only a database I'm working on, it can't physically hurt me. The building I'm working in is above sea level (and has always been) and the only radiation hazard I face is from the antique cathode-ray monitors in this office's file room. When I go home no one will wave a Geiger counter over me and when I turn the faucet in my sink, potable water will emerge.

That makes me a lucky guy. I should remember that but for some reason I keep forgetting it. Maybe we all are prone to forgetting how fortunate we are despite whatever trials we face at any given moment.

Are you a lucky person? Do you ever forget it?

.
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In One Ear

2011-03-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

The New Breakfast Snob 3-12-2011

Frank Zappa- The Black Page (1984)
Super Furry Animals- White Socks and Flip Flops
Patti Smith- Dancing Barefoot
Marianne Faithfull- Ghost Dance
Johnny Indovina- The Poisoning
801- Postcard Love
Steeleye Span- Wee Wee Man
Richard Thompson- Bad Monkey
Strawbs- Little Sleepy
Dare Dukes- Ballad Of Darius McCollum
Robyn Hitchcock- Night Ride to Trinidad
Chris Huff- Lost in the Mausoleum
Monday Machines- Spinning Plates
Garbage-Nobody Loves You
Todd Rundgren- International Feel
Steve Hackett- Clocks
Damien Dempsey- It's All Good
Damien Rice- Volcano
Carrie Rodriguez- Waterbound
Jefferson Airplane- Pretty As You Feel
Robert Wyatt- Gharbzadegi
Moody Blues- For My Lady
Rickie Lee Jones- Lucky Guy
J.J. Cale- You Got Me On So Bad
X-Come Back To Me

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Tails Out

2011-03-10T21:03:00.003-05:00

Pictured above are the rusty remnants of a bygone era, reels of recording tape containing nearly a decade of wasted musical effort on my part- I mean that I was wasted when I made the effort, not that the effort was wasted. It wasn't.

I don't think that any creative effort is every truly wasted, even if it is witnessed by no one but the creator and lasts no longer than the time they spent conjuring it out of the void. There is joy to be found in the creative process itself, be it wringing unholy howls out of a guitar or writing down ideas that no one, not even yourself, will ever see again.

If that sounds futile, it is because it is futile. Everything worthwhile is.

That doesn't mean that actions don't have real and tangible consequences, good or bad, or that there is no point in trying. Trite-sounding or not, trying is its own reward, we learn from each attempt we make, large or small, profound or mundane; and just because there's no real point to it doesn't mean there is no real hope to have or reward to be gained, it just means that in some distant but inevitable future there will come a time when the Sun expands and swallows the Earth and nobody knows or cares who Elvis or The Beatles were, so they certainly won't know or care who you were or what you did- or didn't do because you thought it was hopeless to try.

On a recent business trip, my return train was delayed and when I asked the Amtrak Customer Service attendant how long it would be, he informed me that there had been a "fatality on the track" and the train would be held indefinitely while the coroner and police did their investigation, but he could put me on the next train instead, just a couple hours away. That sounded good to me. I didn't ask about the nature of the fatality, but he told me anyway- it was probably a suicide, and that those had been more and more common lately. The worst one were the ones in cars, he added. I thought about that, thanked him and went to grab some dinner.

As I ate, I silently cursed the inconsiderate jerk who had chosen my train for their suicide. Couldn't they have chosen a less disruptive method to off themselves? Suicide by locomotive doesn't sound especially pleasant and it can't be fun for the people who have to scrape up afterwards either.

After dinner I wanted coffee, so I went to the ubiquitous Sux- and my wallet was gone! My ID, debit card and cash, all gone and me with suddenly no way to get home or get my car out of the parking lot once I got there. I frantically raced back and forth along my path looking,nothing. I asked the sandwich shop if I left it there. Nope, sorry.

My train was leaving soon and I still had my ticket but you need an ID once you get on. I don't know what happens if you don't have ID and I didn't want to find out. I was at a loss as to what to do next when I suddenly heard my name on the PA. I was being paged to the customer service booth by the gentleman I'd spoken to earlier.

The attendant had my wallet, someone had turned it in with my cards and cash intact! I asked him who had done so and he pointed out a homeless-looking man hovering around outside the little service office. I went outside and spoke to the hovering man, thanked him and gave him my cash, figuring it wasn't much and I'd have lost it anyway. And the man's act of decency was priceless.

What would you do if you saw a wallet on the floor of a busy rail station? How would it differ from finding it on a deserted street?

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Shaken, Stirred Or On The Rocks.

2011-03-08T19:44:00.002-05:00

Kelley told me she was divorced when we first met. She was sitting alone at the corner bar with a sad expression on her face, absently poking at an over-cooked steak and drinking beer with shots of whiskey. She asked me what I did for a living and I told her that I had just lost my job and had decided to spend my last twenty dollars on getting drunk. When I sobered up, I'd apply for unemployment, but first I needed to get hammered. She laughed and I knew I'd made an instant friend.

She bought me a round to "celebrate" and within a few minutes she was using her fork to hand-feed me bites of her steak. She took me home to her nice suburban split-level that night and I stayed there for a few wonderful days, drinking and screwing and not really caring about much else. Eventually she brought me back to my dismal abode, which she announced "needed a woman's touch". Kelley planted pansies in the flowerbox outside my apartment, took down my tattered old band posters and told me to get some paintings. It was good advice and my life began to brighten. I stared caring about things that single men often overlook, like having matching silverware and a shower-curtain that isn't moldy.

Kelley had a nice house but it had the aura of strong male presence lingering in it, a guitar she didn't play, a toiletries kit in the bathroom and clothes in the closet...in hindsight it should have bugged me that she had chosen to keep so many of her ex-husband's possessions around but at the time I was just glad to have a guitar around her house and didn't give it much thought until one night just a few weeks after we met when she called me in a panic and told me not to come over that night, to stay home instead.

Oh. OK.

The next day she called me at my new job and told me between sobs that she loved me but couldn't see me any more. She didn't say so, but I got the impression her husband was back.She was good to her word and I haven't seen her since then.

I will be more careful next time. No more married women.

That vow lasted about ten years. I should have known better the second time, but this time it was the most beautiful woman in all the world and we were deeply, hopelessly in love; I knew she would leave her husband soon and all I had to do was stay patient and true and our love would win the day... she did leave her husband, but not for me- she left him for a third man.

The third and hopefully last time, I just didn't care. My new friend didn't want to know much about me except that I was from out of town, but she didn't try to hide her marriage from me, in fact she she very colorfully described her husband's dysfunction to me, a revelation which I found off-putting- but not off-putting enough, apparently.

I didn't give a damn about morals at that point, I was still in a state of broken-hearted shock from the end of my previous affair and I was overflowing with anger and stockpiled sexual energy and needed some internal human combustion and controlled explosions ; I felt rough and luckily my new friend liked it that way, so we got along very, very well as far as that goes.

There was no plan to communicate afterward but she is smart and easily found me on-line; after a few exchanges and a hastily retracted invitation, it was determined that we really don't get along in any non-sexual sense of the word and communication was halted with no animosity, just a vague sadness on my part.

I think maybe it is better that way.

_____________________________

Two FABULOUS new shows for your listening pleasure:

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, MARCH 4 2011

Issac Hayes- I Don't Know What To Do With Myself

Gong- Fohat Digs Holes In Space

Traffic- Shanghai Noodle Factory

Moody Blues- Legend of a Mind

Talking Heads- Drugs

Phil Manzenara- Miss Shapiro

Brian Eno- Back In Judy's Jungle

Ozric Tentacles- Chinatype

Fleetwood Mac- Emerald Eyes

Jefferson Airplane- Turn My Life Down

Ten Years After- Hard Monkeys

Marianne Faithfull- She

Stranglers- Ice Queen

Iron Butterfly- Are You Happy?

King Crimson- One More Red Nightmare

Steve Hillage- Light In The Sky

Crack The Sky- Lighten Up McGraw

Atomic Rooster- People You Can't Trust

Magazine- Honeymoon Killers

Moby Grape- Murder In My Heart For the Judge

Stills/Kooper- It Takes a Lot to Laugh,It Takes a Train to Cry

Savoy Brown- Leavin' Again

Cop Shoot Cop- Two At A Time

Download.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB FEB 26 2011

Ozric Tentacles- Floating Seeds

John Cale & Brian Eno- Spinning Away

Carpenters- Superstar

Hawkwind- Take Me To Your Leader

Jim Protector- The Distance

Pink Frost- The Sun

Peter Blegvad- When Work Was New

Freelance Whales- Broken Horse

Al Stewart- Modern Times

Zerfas- I Don't Understand

Black Pepper Sea- Jackson's Car

Monster Rally/Gong/Faust/Tangerine Dream- Mash-up

Steve Hackett- A Tower Struck Down

The Bitter Tears- Starlight

Green Man- A Conversation With Death

Can- I'm So Green

Taxi To The Ocean- Bombshell

The Kinks- Complicated Life

Ozric Tentacles- Sacred Turf

Download.

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It Is A Shame

2011-03-04T19:37:00.003-05:00

That we've spent the last decade squandering our military might instead of saving it for special occasions, occasions such as a modern -day return to the shores of Tripoli. We could send in the Marines and Colonel Cracked would be gone within days; peace would be restored and countless civilian lives would be saved.

Or would they?

For the sake of argument, let's say we intervene and take out Qadafi and his loyalist thugs. What happens after that? Is there a rebel leader willing and able to step in and fill the enormous power vacuum that is left? Libya has no real internal government or constitution , just local councils under the authoritarian oppression of one man, a war criminal who has ruled since a military coup in 1969. There is no system in place that can maintain Libya's integrity as a country. Unless outside powers intervene, there is likely to be a period of violence and chaos as the Libyans wrestle with the sudden responsibility of sovereignty, living together in a land that has been internally divided by tribal conflicts for centuries.

Italy took control of Libya following the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, then lost it after Mussolini's defeat in WWII. The legendary and bloody campaign fought between Rommel and Montgomery was for control of Libya's oil, which was vital to Hitler's war in Europe. The U.N. maintained control until 1951 and was a monarchy until 1969, its only real period of national identity.

Libya has never really had a chance to sort itself out. Should we put boots on the ground to assist with the re-building of a nation? Our two current enterprises aren't exactly roaring successes, after all. With Iraq and Afghanistan as precedent, it doesn't seem like intervening in Libya would be anything less than a complete and utter clusterfuck with our troops just adding to the bodycount on both sides.

In hindsight, it is a shame that we didn't just wait for a populist revolt and/or the death of Saddam Hussein instead of launching a military invasion and occupation of Iraq. How exactly would things have been worse?

Where are the Rat Patrol when you need them?

It is a shame that Charlie Sheen is such a universally fascinating topic. Is it because addiction and mental illness are subjects that touch almost everyone's life in one way or another, or is it because we are a drab nation of imagination-deprived voyeurs with nothing better to obsess over than one man's incoherent crack-fueled flame-out? In case you didn't already know, smoking crack will make you permanently insane. Money can't save you from that and fame just makes it worse. Yawn.

I was going to say that it was a shame, albeit an inevitable one, that 20-yr old police chief Marisola Valles Garcia was compelled to flee Mexico under death threats from drug gangs...but now I read that Mexican authorities are denying it. And if you can't count on CNN and Mexican authorities to get the story right, then who can you count on? Nothing fishy here, move along.

If drugs were legalized we'd still have druglords, they'd just be called things like Phillip Morris and Coors instead of Los Zetos and La Familia, but at least Phillip Morris won't send you a human head in a box no matter how many Marlboro Miles you collect.

If drugs were legalized would you rush out to try this awesome 'crack' stuff that you've heard so many good things about?

Zombies, Veal and other Sins That Eat Your Brain

2011-02-27T12:12:00.005-05:00

In many pop-culture instances, the zombie is depicted as a horrific eater of human brains...brains, brains, they moan as they shamble along in search of their delicacy of choice.

But why brains?

Consider the example of veal:

Veal is raised in a tightly-controlled environment in which the animal is not allowed any range of movement or chance of exercise and it is fed a horrible sludge of chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and by-products. The calf is never allowed to develop past childhood. This is not done to benefit the calf, it is done to make the resulting flesh-product soft, tender and marketable to the consumer. The zombie, if you will.

The average American brain has a lot in common with veal. Open the skull of Mr. Couch Potato and you'll find a swollen, flabby mass of pinkish-grey matter floating in a viscous, sticky pool of high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated palm oil, brine, piss and cheap, watery draft beer; a flaccid muscle that has never been encouraged or permitted to step outside the confines of its assigned place and as a result it has a plump and soggy tenderloin where the frontal lobe should be.

Brains...brains...brains...

Any flesh steeped in this foul and gooey mental marinade would be irresistible to a zombie that enjoyed a diet of Cheetos, Big Macs and unpronounceable preservatives in life. Which most zombies did, I opine, since I have a feeling that bad diet causes the onset of Early Undead Syndrome in the first place.

The true horror of zombies is not that they are the 'walking dead', the true horror is their cannibalism. They are what they eat and what they eat is you.

But zombies are a heavy topic for an early Sunday morning. Let's shuffle on.

--------------------------------------------------

I'm nursing a cup of tepid machine-dispensed coffee and looking out the window of the break room at the mirrored windows across the street. Is someone looking back?

A woman's voice startles me. A serious-looking but pretty woman introduces herself and asks if I'm new in the office. She has seen me walking around and wonders what department I'm in.

I explain that I'm from out-of-town and leaving in a day or two. I listen to myself tell her that I like the way her earring match her eyes. I do like it, but why did I say that? My silent question is answered with a serious-looking but pretty smile.

Later there is a moment of confession and it sounds true because I have heard it all before and it does add up, but the story pauses so that roles can shift and suddenly I'm listening as a mother lies to her child. Tell your father, she says.

There is a hidden edge to the way she says 'father' and I don't need a confession to understand why that is, I already know. I've heard that before too.

I imagine her reviewing a mental checklist as she says goodbye and snaps her phone shut.

How easy that seems, flipping a switch. On. Off. On. Off. I could use a switch like that instead of the 240mm fader that I seem to be stuck with.

Enough.

Right now I'd settle for a Mute button.

-----------------------------------------------

Famous Business Trips Pt. 1

2011-02-22T20:46:00.000-05:00

I've been sent to Washington D.C. to help fix a File Room Emergency and I think my hotel room is haunted.

I'm not sure which is harder to believe: that there are ghosts in my hotel or that my company keeps having File Room Emergencies (FRE) that require me to travel. I'm not knocking it, but the reality is that you should never have an FRE in the first place. A file room is basically just a giant horizontally-layered pile of alphanumeric order. It should never be a cause for alarm or last-minute panic- but I am learning that it very often is.That's where I come in.

The records clerk in this office is quitting effective Friday and no one else seems to understand the file system except him, so I've been sent to learn the system before he quits. They don't have a replacement for him yet, so I'll have to retain the knowledge until they hire someone, at which time I'll come back and train that person. To me, this plan smacks of ill-planning and desperation, but hey; it's in my favor this time.

I took the 6am train to get here and when I arrived, the guy who was supposed to train me had called in sick and my new boss was "in a meeting", so the receptionist ushered me into the file room where I sat and waited for my new boss to appear.

Strangely, I found the train ride up to be quite enjoyable, watching the sun rise while the train rocked steadily north had a certain clean and timeless quality to it, but there was no such special quality to the file room. I looked around a bit and saw a lot of color-coded alphanumeric order, some dusty old computers and a few hand-held code scanners. Whee.

Eventually my new boss arrived and introduced himself. He was a fat, cheerless appendix of a man and I immediately disliked him. I don't like bosses in general and I especially don't like being told what to do by fat bosses. I'm the one who should be telling him what to do and what I'd be telling him is :stop eating food that has passed through windows and start doing some fucking push-ups.

He explained that he didn't know how the computers worked ( duh) but he would call IT and see if they could help. I didn't tell him the computers were fine and I had been fucking around on-line for a couple hours,I was starting to cop an attitude and didn't want to save him the trouble of looking stupid to IT.

Boss had a brilliant plan. He would call Absent Guy and have Absent Guy train me via speakerphone. AG answered the phone accompanied by the sound of crying infants and Sesame Street TV. Boss shouted his plan at the telephone and the telephone yelled back affirmatively. Babies wailed. Big Bird sang. Hope sank.

"OK, you're all set", said Boss, fleeing the room.

"I see why you quit", I quipped to Absent Guy. "Are you coming in tomorrow? This can wait, we can't do phone training for this. Anyone with any sense would know that."

"Tomorrow then."

This would be some easy overtime, I thought. Not much to do though...luckily my old radio pal Andrew lives up here now and we met for a long lunch and caught up on news, after which I got lost walking back to office and wound up wandering aimlessly around Georgetown. After a couple of hours it started getting cold so I hailed a cab back to the office. All told I was gone for almost five hours which wasn't quite long enough because I forgot to miss a conference call about some remote FREs that I imagine I'll have to go deal with soon. That's not so bad, really. I have job security because of it.

After the call I got bored and caught a cab to the hotel where I killed some time the old-fashioned way, which made me hungry so I went out for Mexican, carefully adding the receipt to my new but already impressive collection.

Including travel, it was an eleven-hour workday and I didn't actually do anything except sit in on a conference call that I could have attended in-person if I'd stayed at home. A great deal of money was spent, some of which I got to keep, but absolutely nothing got done. From a business viewpoint, it was a total fiasco, but from my point of view it was an all-expenses paid travel vacation day. Hooray for that!

Music Preservation

2011-02-21T21:40:00.000-05:00

My head might be crippled but my left arm works fine, at least it did until I played guitar for nine hours and my hand seized up in a claw-shape...the cramp passed pretty quickly but it brought back a painful memory from the winter of 2001, back when I had nerve damage in my left arm and was getting a second opinion after being told I'd probably need an amputation. The second surgeon told me he could save my arm and he did, but by that time I'd completely lost the use of my hand and needed six months of physical therapy before I could tie my shoes, much less play guitar. I sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'd never play again and settled for an aimless, empty life of marathon misery and demolition drinking.

I will find a shrink and try to work out some details, but in a broad sense I felt an overwhelming sense of loss when I quit playing and I think the booze and pills were my sad attempt at filling the void that my music left behind.

Three things saved my life. One was music, in the form of the radio station that I am still a proud member of. The other two things were surgeries.

Music isn't a hobby for me and it certainly isn't my job, it is something much more important and difficult to define- something that includes but also transcends passion .

I really can't explain it properly, it would seem daft to most people to spend so much time, money and energy on something that doesn't generate revenue...but then again, it dawns on me that I probably spend as much time and money on playing guitar and music as the average American spends on watching TV and movies, which makes playing guitar seem like the essence of sanity in comparison.

Right now I'm leaning on my guitar like I would lean on a lover or a drug; it is the safest and surest way for me to get through the turmoil inside my head. I know I'm not the greatest player on the planet, but I like to think that I have a sound that is unique and expressive, which I think is rare thing in world full of sound-alike guitar clones, if I must say so myself...and I must also say that I'm pretty fucking happy that I can play guitar for nine hours before my arm cramps up. A couple of years ago I could only play for about 45 minutes at a time, so this is huge progress.
It has been so gradual that I haven't really noticed, but it is a welcome improvement.

But I have to put my beloved axe down for a few days and head to Washington D.C. to learn a new computer system so that I can train new employees in the near future. I'm not sure how I got to be in this position, but I seem to be the only employee in my company who understands how certain databases work and I hope I'm not the only one who notices this, because I'm scheduled to have lunch with the Big Boss tomorrow and I really want some good news to go along with all my hard work.

And when I get home, I have a guitar and a radio show waiting for me. The only thing I need to do to get my music on the radio is to make the music, and if that isn't enough motivation to practice, I don't know what is. Have you ever been driving around town and suddenly heard your own band on the radio? I have, and it is a very good feeling. I'm a lucky guy.

There have been moments recently when I wasn't sure if I'd ever want to play again , but I think those moments have passed and I'm already anticipating the next project, even if I'm not exactly sure what that may be.

But now I need some rest because I have to get up very, very early tomorrow.

When I get back, I'll try to fix this mess in my head and maybe even get a few songs out of the process. There's work to be done and some of it will be good, so stay tuned.

Until then, goodnight and thank you for listening.

Ooops

2011-02-19T19:49:00.003-05:00

I close my eyes but I can still see her, she's smiling but blood streaks her face and I reach out to touch her, to clear away the crimson, but I have no fingers on my hand, I see them and they are severed, dangling moist and red from a necklace around her alabaster throat and she is smiling not at me but at someone behind me, and although I cannot turn my head, I know her necklace is a gift from him and he is back, wanting more...

Holy shit. Where am I?

Oh wow. I'm in the broadcast booth, smack-dab in the middle of a live radio broadcast. How long have I been lost in a semi-hallucinatory recollection of last night's horrid dream?

I look at the timer on one of the CD decks: about ten seconds.

Ten seconds is plenty of time for things to go wrong on live radio and sure enough, when I looked down at the broadcast console, I was lost amongst all the blinking lights and attention-seeking buttons. There were three CDs playing simultaneously and, panicking, I accidentally turned on the fourth deck, bringing my total number of inputs to four.

By this time I'd forgotten which deck had the song I intended to play, I'd even forgotten what song it was...

...but...

...the choir on the song in 3, it is in key with the guitar from 2 (or is it 4?) and there are two violins that work together, 1 and 4 maybe?, and if I can avoid any abrupt percussive outbursts from any of these songs, I just might be able to pull this off, because this sounds pretty good all mixed-up like this...

We have a light that flashes when the phone rings and it took me by surprise...hello?

There was a woman on the phone with a question: who is this playing ? This is great!

It's Love Kills Theory and a few other things that are happening by mistake.

Way cool. Keep it up!

That was good to hear. I'm listening to the recording now and she was right, it's the best part of the show. As usual, there are a lot of flubs but that particular passage has got some interestingly musical moments.

With dreams like I've been having, it's amazing that I can function at all, much less do something as complex and wildly exposed as a live radio broadcast, but somehow I get by. Somehow.

But don't take my word for it: Get the Podcast here.

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THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB, FEB. 19th, 2011 :

.Joe Strummer and Mescaleros- Coma Girl
The Bitter Tears- Slay The Heart of The Earth
Of Montreal- Will You Come and Fetch Me?
The Duhks- You Don't See It
Elfpower- Old Familiar Scene
Various Artists Live Mixed-up Mess /Love Kills Theory- Lost in Vacuum Space Mash Up      Melomane- Even Though You're Born Toulouse
Speck Mountain- I Feel Eternal
Geraldine Fibbers - House Is Falling
Jordan Reyne - The Proximity of Death
HuDost -Trespasser
Cocteau Twins- Road, River and Rail
Monacy- Twisted
Garbage- Cup of Coffee
F&M- Rising To The Moon
Atris- That Would Be The End
Taxi To The Ocean- Crystal Cuts
Mr. Gnome- Three Birds
The Purrs- Fear Of Flying
Beauregard Ajax -Things Will Work Out Fine
Scream Daisy- Learn To Fight
Frank Black- I've Seen Your Picture
Cursive    - The Recluse
The Frames- Sad Songs
Beauregard Ajax- Take You Far Away
801- Rong Wrong
No Restraints - I Was Wrong
Pink Frost   - You Should Know
Cafebar 401-   Troubles

The Lighter Side

2011-02-17T20:50:00.019-05:00

Yesterday I was referred to a psychiatrist in order to discuss my disturbingly bleak and bitter new outlook on life. I reached her service, which assured me they'd call back with an appointment as soon as possible. Which turned out to be after lunch today. I ducked into an empty conference room and took the call.

My potential therapist introduced herself to me and asked me how I was feeling. I felt OK and said so and I was going to add "at the moment" and elaborate that it was the sudden shifts in mood that were troubling me, but she cut me off politely.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news", she said slowly, as if to let the compassion seep into each syllable, " unfortunately my client load is completely full and I can't take on any more patients now. I can give you some numbers...are you sure you are alright?"

I assured her that I was and she rung off.

I had to laugh. Yesterday I had a phone screening, after which I was told that my condition was severe and someone would call me as soon as possible, which I thought meant the same day. It took 24 hours for my call to be returned and then it was only to inform me that they were too busy to help me and that I should call someone else.

Fine. If that is the way it is, so be it. When I finally find someone to help me, I hope I remember the tragicomic poetry of that phone call and how perfectly it meshed with the feelings that drove me to seek help in the first place.

Strange thing was, I was smiling so hard that I figure I must have been cured , despite never having seen a shrink in the first place.

Treatment sure has come a long way since the day of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, I reckon. This new psychiatry is about as out-patient as you can get, the whole treatment could fit on Twitter if it had to.

Only I didn't have much time to think about telecommunications and my miraculous new recovery because my manager interrupted my reverie with some interesting news.

[snip]

Work gave me a bonus and shiny letter about my "positive attitude and professional guidance". The award was for work done in 2010, back when I actually was happy.

Then I found out I'm going on another trip, which is OK with me except I still feel down and need to find someone I can pay to listen to me talk. Maybe I'll get sent to Vegas and I can pay someone to have sex with me instead, which would probably cure my sadness a lot faster than talking would anyway.

I'm kidding, of course!

I don't have to pay anyone to listen to me, my insurance covers it.

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Close to Home

2011-02-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

Lately my mind and moods have been changing a bit too much for my liking and it seems to be getting worse, so while my mood was temporarily changed in a heretofore unknown way, I placed a call to our employee assistance line and talked to a counselor who asked me a series of questions, pronounced me severely depressed and said she'd set up an appointment for me as soon as possible. I found it funny that one of the questions was " how much time have you missed from work as a result?" , which amused me because I still have leftover vacation time from last year and haven't missed anytime to speak of . Hmmm. Maybe that's why I'm so blue...anyway, my insurance covers five visits, so I've nothing to lose. That old cliche about 'admitting you have a problem' is true. Once an initial wave of fear passed, I found myself feeling better just for taking the step. I half-joked with a friend that I was afraid they'd have people waiting at my door to lock me up in a padded cell, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen.

On the bus home, my passenger-pal Jean told me that there was a fire on the [xxxx] block of my street and asked me if I'd seen the news. I hadn't, so she pulled it up on her phone-gadget and we found a TV news picture of my block engulfed in smoke, fire trucks and firefighters everywhere. I looked around for orderlies from the psych ward , but didn't see any, which was a relief, but it was still pretty stressful to see that picture and wonder if it was my house that was burning.

The fire was pretty bad but I don't think anyone was injured and it was at the other end of the block, across the corner from me, so we didn't get smoke damage, just a lingering chemically smell in the air.

By the time I got home the fire had been extinguished and the smoke had cleared.

It was a reasonably warm night, so I sat on the stoop for a while, watching the lights and wondering what the future holds next.

Losing Wait

2011-02-15T19:46:00.003-05:00

Once upon a time there was a perfect woman who told me that she was in love with me. I say 'once upon a time' not because it was in the ancient past, but because it is something that has only happened to me once in my lifetime, and I say 'perfect' not because she was perfect, only that she had luggage perfectly matched with my own.

For over a year I floated on that feeling and I was amazed at how much easier life was with someone to share it with, the future was so bright that the present couldn't help but glow a little.

Until the day came when she told me that her feelings for me weren't real. She was grateful that I had saved her life a few times and all that, but she couldn't imagine herself ever being happy with me. She used to say that she couldn't imagine life without me ,but obviously she can, because she's gone far away and I'm still here. Now I'm the one left wondering how I will go on.

I guess I could be telling this to a psychiatrist, but why bother? I already know my childhood fucked me up, that isn't exactly hard to figure out. In fact, the closest parallel to the way I feel now is the way I used to feel as a kid when we found out that we were going to be living somewhere new, with relatives or family friends because 'home' was a bit too fractured for us to be there, wherever 'home' was. I'm not saying it was all bad, but there are definitely abandonment and esteem issues at play, not to mention the fact that I was a binge drinker from age 13 onward. Teenage alcoholics don't drink because they are celebrating an emotionally healthy home life, that's for sure.Mostly they drink because they think that they are worthless and that nobody loves them.

That worthless feeling works for adults too. It worked so well for me that I almost died from it. I can't say that returning to the land of the living has been easy, but it has been worth it and things objectively are pretty good for me now. Intellectually, I know that I'm not an unloved child and that there are people who love me. But there is a huge difference in being loved and having someone be in love with you. Or at least it seems that way to me, but I really don't know much about it and I don't suppose I ever really will. I do know being abandoned by my one and only romantic love was a dagger into the tiny heart of my inner child, a real Achilles moment for me and I'll be a lot more guarded next time, if there is one.

My life isn't the wreck it used to be and I'm sure that eventually I'll feel better and maybe even meet someone new, but at the moment it doesn't feel that way. My trust has been shattered and I feel the same 'this is all my fault' despair that I felt as a kid. But it wasn't my fault then and it isn't my fault now. Does knowing that help? I don't know if it does because I have nothing to compare it to.

But I'm tired of giving myself a pep talk every morning and saying that "I'm OK" and trying to make it true by repeating it like a mantra. The truth is I'm not OK and I don't know how long it will be until I am. No one who has been through what I've been through should be expected to bounce right back, I'm been through worse things and there is no instant fix, and I'm hoping that by writing this I will shed some of the weight, because I feel bogged down and mired at the moment, trapped by unfinished songs and stories fallen prey to my lost momentum and erratic moods.

There is a thin line between letting your art heal your wounds and letting your wounds poison your art and that is something I'm just now figuring out, all these years later, after ruining so much of my work with vengeful ignorance.

I don't want to produce works of ill-placed revenge, there is a terrible karmic risk there and mine is a bit tattered already, so maybe a bit of writer's block is OK. It happens when I get to feeling down.

I am not sure this is depression though, it feels more like grief, which is an emotion I'm familiar with mainly due to my long-term struggle to repress it. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all. I'm not exactly sure how to make feelings go away without resorting to booze and pills...maybe covering that stuff up wasn't the best approach.

Clearly something is going right these days, though, because I'm confident that I'm not going to drink and I'm not suicidal, but right now I'm about as sad and hurt as I have ever been as an adult. I really do appreciate the friends who have tried to cheer me up, but it isn't that sort of wound, one that can be cheered away. It will heal, I'm sure, but it will happen at it's own pace, all I can do is try to keep interested in things around me and try not to hurt anyone. I don't mean to worry anyone or make it seem like I'm not grateful to those who care, but right now I feel absolutely awful and I need to admit it and face it before I can get past it. Which I will. And when I do feel happy again, every kind word will have helped, has already helped.

So today sucks and tomorrow probably will too, but after that, who knows? It's a long future.

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Loneliness Is a Big Club

2011-02-12T17:04:00.001-05:00

For most of my life I've relied on the kindness of fur trappers.

THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB 2/12/2011: BIG FAT VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL

Atomic Hooligan- Thief
Oh baby.

Garbage-It's All Over But The Crying
Which just keeps on coming.

Neil Young- A Man Needs A Maid
And vice versa. Don't forget that part.

Taxi To The Ocean- Hold On To Me
Good tunes from the Netherlands.

Claanad- The Poison Glen

Tom Waits- Romeo Is Bleeding
What would Valentine's Day be without Tom Waits? Happy? Can't have that.

Shivaree- I Don't Care (Live)
I do care. I can't help it.

Cat Dail- Think Of A Story
This story is short, sweet and well-told. The way it should always be but usually isn't.

Cafebar 401- The One I Love The Most
More cool and current Netherlands rock .

Motorbaby- Submerged
I can grok that feeling.

Joan as Policewoman- Eternal Flame
A beautifully produced, multi-layered song by one of my faves.

Rebekah Higgs- Little Voice
A welcome new addition to the playlist.

Carrie Rodriguez - She Ain't Me
I would like country music if it sounded like this song instead of like Ford commercials.

Ross Phazor- Someday
Hi Jake!

Eleni Mandell- Cracked
Fun bitterness from the very versatile Mandell.

Monday Machines- Ruined Morning
The fabulous production by Cary Grace makes this CD go with almost everything.

The Pretty Things- The Rain
The Pretty Things- Loneliest Person
I really shouldn't have to explain this.

Cursive- Am I Not Yours?
I guess not.

Funkadelic -You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure
Love me some Funky-delic.

Little Feat- All That You Dream
...but not like this before.

XTC- That's Really Super, Supergirl

Curtis Mayfield -Little Child Running Wild
Supergirl, Superfly, same difference, right?

Lou Reed -How Do You Think It Feels?
C'mere and let me spread some empathy on you.

R.Crumb All-Stars- Until The Real Thing Comes Along

Capt. Beefheart & the Magic Band - Call On Me
The Captain is missed and so are you.

The Frames- Angel At My Table
And a devil on my shoulder. And check out that wah. I bet it is made of chrome.

The Purrs- Good Times To Come
Hi Kevin!

Nouvelle Vague- Have You Ever Fallen In Love?
No, of course not.. Do I look completely fucking stupid? Don't answer that.

Suicidal Tendencies- I Hate You Better
Despite the band name and song title, this is a surprisingly beautiful rocker.

Don't take my word on how great these songs are: Get the podcast and find out for yourself.

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