My Best Pot Stories

Workin At The Carwash, Yeah

Today, I'm finally getting rid of my cell phone. This step is huge, not in the sense that I'm walking off into the woods with only a pack of gum and a mirror, because by the end of the weekend I will surely have a new one. What is so remarkable, is that I've had the phone now for five years. In the way that people imagine an investment of hundreds of dollars might lead to having an object for numbers of years if not a lifetime, my five-years-young phone has not only become a relic, it has become fossilized, later excavated and displayed in museums, and finally, used to reconstruct how humans got along before the picture-phone. To its credit, it sends and receives text messages, with both monophonic tones and ASCII animations,  it also has a black and white display, and to the chagrin of everyone I know, an antenna.

I bought this phone when I moved to California after an oddly conceived idea to go live in Alaska for a summer. Even in Alaska, I was one of the rare hold-outs who did not have a cell phone. Even the Pirate who claimed to live in a tree was texting messages to shroom fairies in the tundra about hella-hiking, or was it heli-hiking.

Thanks in part to the advent of cell-phones, email, Facespace, and Twerpr, staying in touch with the Alaska-shroom-fairies has proved inevitable/obligatory/easier than olden days when a stamped letter via cart and pony was the only way of keeping contact with friends over great distances. Nearly two years after escaping the tundra wilderness, I found myself at the central bus station of downtown Chicago, awaiting the arrival of Elizabeth, a fellow survivor from the mosquito country, Denali, Alaska.

“Chirp-chirp-chirp”

I had my cell phone ring set to “Crickets”. It was the only ring available on the phone that didn't scare the crap out of me or cause a migraine. For such a primitive phone, the cricket noise was rather life-like, as I missed calls on several occasions while walking around, thinking “wow, there sure are a lot of crickets around here. Huh.”

“RD! Where are you?”

A kid from Korea who worked with us in Alaska had an undying crush on Elizabeth. To his frustration, he could absolutely not wrap his tongue around her name. I thought I'd greet her with my best impression;

“LAZERBED! I'm at the bus station, where are you?”

“I'm here too. I just got off the bus. I need to find you, there's a creepy man following me. He was on the bus sitting behind me the entire way from Wisconsin, and I swear he was trying to sneak his cell phone between the cracks of the seats to take pictures of me, and now he won't get more than ten feet away from me. His legs wobble like a tub of lard, and oh god, now he's drooling, RD WHERE ARE YOU?”

“Oh no, I'm stuck. I somehow wedged myself between a bus and a band of abuelitas who are unloading about a million tyvek bags full of tamales. It could be a while.”

In a perfect world, I could have started a micro-blogging feed of me eating tamales, while Elizabeth could have sent a cell phone picture of the slobbering lard-tub to google maps and labeled his stake-out area as “Pervert spot” with a zero-star rating. But Elizabeth and I had a train to catch, and did not have time for such new-age shenanigans. Chicago was our connecting point for boarding a train to Sandusky, Ohio.

If you're not from Sandusky, but know where it is on a map, chances are, you're a roller coaster enthusiast. Since the age of twelve, when standing in a line for a cork-screwing-double-looper didn't mean breaking down into hysterics (before ever getting on the ride), it had been a mission to get to Sandusky's Cedar Point Park. Cedar Point usually held and broke all the Guinness Book of World Records holdings for scream-machines, the tallest, fastest, most “why do people do this to themselves.” Every year at Christmas when I'd get the brand-new, next year's edition of the Guinness, I'd bookmark the roller coaster page, and dream of the day I'd get to Cedar Point Park.

Every year the statistics out-did themselves; “wow, a 200 foot drop, almost straight down!” Then, “wow, a 300 foot drop totally straight down!” and finally, “a 400 foot drop more than straight down.”

Having tempted fate by trying to live at Denali National Park for a summer, which included a trip hitchhiking for 500 miles with the sole purpose of sucking down Mudslides, a booze-induced excuse for a chocolate shake, at what can only be regarded as an All-American-Obesity factory, TGIFriday's. Tempting ourselves on something called the Top Thrill Dragster, a roller coaster promising to send riders 500 feet in the air at 120 miles per hour, seemed like child's play in comparison.

I hadn't actually ridden any roller coasters in about six years. I wasn't nervous about rides breaking down, being ejected from my seat mid-loop, or loosing my lunch at any point of the journey. I was nervous that I'd find the whole affair boring and not worth spending an entire day in lines to enjoy. What if I had simply grown up, and the whole idea of spending much too much money to get sunburned and eat fried who-knows-what was more nauseating than getting on a ride that knocks people upside down eleven times in less than a minute.

The only way to find out was to get through the gates and head first to the then world-record-holder for tallest and fastest ride on the planet, the Top Thrill Dragster.

“I knew you'd want to ride the giant boner first,” Elizabeth said, our eyes fixed on the tallest phallus ever constructed for human amusement.  “Why do men build things that look like their penises?”

Indeed, The Top Thrill, looked unlike most roller-coasters I had remembered. No angled chain-link lift, no rows of tear-drop loops, just a 500-foot erection in the sky, with tiny arms, barely visible waving up from the top of the head before plummeting down the shaft at speeds that could rip the braces off all those adrenaline seeking teenagers. “What better way to start a day, yeah?”

And since Elizabeth brought it up, we spent the hour long wait in line discussing the psychology of men and their penises, for which I was only too happy to oblige. The time literally zoomed by as we bore witness to train after train of almost-crying, somewhere-between-shrieking-and-laughing, and just-soiled-my-undies riders come through the station, nearly unable to pull themselves out of the fiber-glass coaster cars.

Finally getting ourselves strapped into safety harnesses, about to be whipped off for our thirty second journey, I looked over at Elizabeth and questioned, “Are you sure about this?”

It was like were about to get married or something equally as horrifying. “NO!” she yelled out.

“Good, because I guess it's too late now!” And that was the best part, knowing that the high-schooler with a badly paying summer job spent half a second to make sure we weren't about to die, had successfully crossed us passed the line of no return. Good-bye sweaty palms, hello top thrill penis!

Serendipity and Stuffed Llamas

The attic at my parent's house resembles one of those oddity shops with overpriced crap you would never need, but if you know how to decorate your house with a diorama of stuffed rats outfitted in tiny pioneer clothes staged to re-enact the Oregon Trail, then this is where to find it, kind of a place. My father traveled the globe when I was young; his often alcohol-induced taste for what he thought was meaningful and valuable found its way into our attic from his various escapades covering every continent to behold a library-cum-museum of shriekingly crazy and awesomely spellbinding curios.

“Don't worry, the llama's dead, it won't spit at you,” is the last warning my mother might yell to unsuspecting treasure hunters as they make their way upstairs to the attic. The taxidermied llama, which stands at an impressive six feet high, glares down the stairwell, face locked in its final act of defense before being taken down by an Amazonian Sherpa with a poison arrow in celebration for the white man whose Peruvian wife just gave birth to a bouncing baby boy back home in America. The llama arrived from the Andes around the time I started to walk. It would be another year or two before I would meet my father.

To that end, my father's appearance and disappearance in my life was something of a playful mystery as a youngster. His face would turn up on the back the children's books my mom would read to me, with the words “Illustrated by,” next to a picture of him holding a cat I never knew we had. Pictures of him with long blond hair, or sometimes short black hair and a thick mustache would come in the mail, postmarked Libya, UK, Mexico, Vietnam, Cape Verde. Jewels and scrolls adorned with symbols of the Free Masons, the pyramid with the all-seeing eye, the double-headed eagle, the compass and the square; all delivered via special courier, made their way up past the llama, and on to the shrine of dad.

But as far as appearance and background goes, he was a simple man, really, he just had a lot of what mom would call “special hobbies.” Portly, familiar but anonymous, from a military family just like any other, the boy from Poughkeepsie was on track to be a run-of-the-mill factory worker or retail store manager. Somewhere along the line however, Indiana Jones called up, and the real world hardly heard from him again.

“How's the eccentric one?” I'd overhear at family holidays. “Wouldn't you know, he bought a boat and sailed to American Samoa. Lord knows when we'll hear from that one again. Can you believe the audacity of that man? I mean, puh-leeze, bringing that housekeeper all the way over here from Payroo and leaving us to teach that roly-poly kid of his some damn English. If it weren't for us, that kid would only know how to say 'nachos-bell-grande.'” The picture they painted made me think he was the lucky one.

His eccentricities, however, did have a number of notable, and even international highlights. Perhaps dumb luck of the wandering soul, or for the conspiracy minded, a calculated move by Masonic grand wizards, he ended up holding the camera that broadcast the first images of the Berlin Wall falling down to the whole world. In a package that contained a piece of the graffitied symbol of reunification and freedom, the attached letter read, “Dateline, Berlin. Feeling the momentum, I went to see what was happening, and there was Tom Brokaw right in front of me, face in panic-mode. 'My camera man just fainted, we're on live, it's all you.'” The first images Americans saw of Eastern European freedom was through his eyes with the zoom control under his fingers. The package also included a scoffed and stampeded upon pin he found in the wake of the celebration- a shiny red star with the hammer-and-sickle emblem in the center. For years it stowed in the attic, pinned on the pelt of a giant polar bear he supposedly killed, but I brought it with me when I moved away for college and now I keep it with me everywhere I go.

Always situated for whatever wind may take him, following weeks, months, and even years on the road, he eventually led himself to the tempests of booze. An anthropologist might be able to trace the lineage of addiction through the photos he'd send from the road... dad holding a beer at dinner, dad doing shots with Australian backpackers at the hostel, dad holding an icy tumbler in his hotel room, dad holding a mostly empty bottle shirtless on the beach. The red leathery texture of his skin became more apparent as Kodachrome developing yielded clearer results through the years.

And the courier shipments got more bizarre as the drinks became less diluted: a copy of the Koran that belonged to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the last salon chair Marilyn Monroe ever sat in, pieces of staging from the Opening Ceremony of the Seoul Olympics.

Rotting Dog and Her Friend With Bubble Gum

ACT 1

EXTERIOR / SUNSET / NEAR A BAR / OPEN ROAD / DIRT DRIVEWAY

TWO SISTERS or BROTHERS or ONE PERSON or XXX in conversation

ROTTING DOG: You're the vagina that grew out of my face. I'd stitch you up if I - and there it is already... Two little flashing numbers... dancing about, trying to tell me something.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: :\

ROTTING DOG: They tell me that I'm behind even before I've even begun.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: Symbols and monoliths. The real genesis is the metaphor. We cross bridges, not boundaries.

ROTTING DOG: It gives you something to discuss around the water cooler- back firing bids with before and after pictures. Do you remember Grandma Universe? How she'd sit in that giant be-jeweled throne, and just smile all day? Her teeth sparkled like diamonds.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: I looked too long and ended up with nothing to say. Imagination stomped upon like a dirty hat. Back peddling, and offering a hat out, or perhaps a bear sleeping in the middle of the street. How long can you chase the stubbornness of time?

ROTTING DOG: Intertwined with the star mandala.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: Head, lifted, eyes closed.

ROTTING DOG: What do you think we'll grow up to be like?

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: Have you seen my underwear? What am I pulling out of you? What are you pumping into me?

ROTTING DOG: I remember sitting on your couch, legs crossed, coffee cold. Slithering on the inside, icing on the cake.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM: Caps on, guns drawn, drugs gawn. When do we meet the man in the hood? Is this the bus stop?

ROTTING DOG: Long enough for my coat to turn into pins and for rainbows to start emanating out of my eyes.

HER FRIEND WITH BUBBLE GUM reblogged vooduude: Should I trim my pubes y/n?

A Bell, a Cup, a Duck

Snippets. Fragments. Tiny cut up squares, dancing in the air, sweeping away with the tide.

Recycled. Tracks and Shoulders. Interconnected weave, peeling itself off into more interconnected weaves. Hysteria.

Instant gratification, instant consumption, instant addiction. Instant repetition, no rewind necessary. Imaginary clones of fictitious binaries ciphered through algo-rhythms hardwired into our spines.

Everything is a copy of itself. Death is the mind that wanders through the trap door.

Untethered division and dislocation: amused by its own shadow, amused by its own distraction.

You can do that for a little while, but then everything becomes dream like.

EAT. GET FAT.

The cultural revolution happened while you were out for coffee.

Highly revolutionized, further personalized, ever tighter and more delicious things you've already railroaded spearheaded and galvanized.

There is no one to tell you when to start wearing your wallet in your back pocket.

Leaves, fossilized in the cold air, hanging off the trees. Fingers shrinking.

Medias stitch the line of comprehension, little envelopes of time delivered over the waring factions of thought and desire. Stepping out of the pod and forgetting which one you came from.

Missed out. Obsessed. Alley cats.

Records that play in the still of the night when the holes in your head light up the stars in the sky.

You're not being poisoned. You're just getting older, my dear.

The Places That Scare Me part II

“The Places That Scare Me” is an idea I caught onto through the Buddhist teacher/author Pema Chodron. Part of her philosophic approach is to practice loving kindness in regards to all things, including, and perhaps paying special attention to the places that scare you. In this way, we practice in the discomfort of every day life, and learn to incorporate groundlessness into the life we “wish” we had by letting go of the stories protecting the emotions. One of her books is called When Things Fall Apart.

Between March and May of 2009, my tour through the military brothels and sleazy west-coast leather bars pushed me to the line where excitement and fear dance into night's fog. By the time I got to Los Angeles, it felt like everything had fallen apart, including, and most pressingly, my pants.

Hiking with 50lbs on my back and 30lbs strolling on the ground, stranded on Hollywood Blvd after being thrown out of a Motel 6, I realized the scratching feeling that was annoying my knees like an insistent mosquito making a solid line of “swollen” around my calves was actually the feeling of my shorts literally unraveling in front of me.

“Huh, I don't remember them being that way an hour ago.” as I watched the decaying fabric surrender to gravity in pathetic strips of “giving up.” Trying to not pay attention to it, I stuck my hands in my pockets to see if I could find any morsel of Hollywood street map that might be on a receipt or brochure I meant to throw away... and my hands effortlessly blasted right through my pockets, now reduced to threads.

The emergency breaks were pulled, and I stopped in my tracks. I looked up, the Hollywood sign heckled me from above, dodging my returns by hiding behind the palms. I felt like Laura Dern in the David Lynch movie Inland Empire, throwing up blood on the intersection of Hollywood and Vine after being stabbed in the stomach with a screwdriver. I do wonder why Lynch's pleas to nominate Dern for an Oscar in that role went without a nod.

Visualize. Put your best intentions out to the universe. Trust, and the universe will provide.

I know. I saw The Secret too. And look, the puppy arrived in my arms not even three days later. Can you believe it?

That being said, no Oscar for Dern. No roof for my plans. No plans for my pants. Is the director about to yell “cut and wrap!” and send us on a lunch break?

The cresting high of playing for Military jar heads the week before in Oceanside gave way to the below zero trough of Los Angeles, and I barely had the train fare to skip town. The frayed edges of my decrepit shorts echoed the sentiment of my shorting nerves.

Another popular slogan in self-help circles is “Start where you are.” I do enjoy being half dressed many times, so my frayed rock-star outfit is rather appropriate to be honest. Who needs pockets anyway? They hold the things we want to take care of later but lug around with us now... kind of like the 80lbs of gear (both camping and musical) I've been toting around. Every magician needs their magic trunk though.

Best foot and intent forward- in San Diego there's a studio where I can go and lock myself in for two months, spending every day with nothing to freak out over except music.

The Way I See It

“Okay, and, what's your name?”

The need to simultan-eously personalize and computerize every man-woman-and child's physical experience has lead to a phenomena of being asked your name before completing any kind of order.

When your order has been completed, a person who was probably separate from and unaware of the conversation you had earlier with the cashier, takes one look at the receipt, calls your name and hands you your meal/coffee/2-sided copies directly, as if they themselves had invested personally into your order, and boy how they hope it reflects well for them and the company they represent.

“Ardi?”

“No, the two initials, R ... D.”

“Are-Dean?”

Sometimes I even wear a t-shirt spray-painted with a huge “RD”, that, like a kindergarten teacher, I'll point to and spell out when the cashier is helplessly confused by the message I'm trying to convey with my name.

I recognize my voice is low and I have a tendency to be shy, and on top of the constant cranking of espresso machines, the fact that people might not be expecting initials when they start writing a name down, plus its short syllabic presence which doesn't lend to framing against other sounds for extrapolation (hence the phantom syllables that turn up in some people's interpretations, “Are-Eee-Dee?” “Are-Dee-Yah?”)- I can see the real barriers to getting it on one pass. Once I do get the point across to the cashier, then the real challenge of meeting the societal/personal dichotomy begins.

The system of entering a customer's name on a receipt along with the short-hand version of what was ordered by the vendor's guest happens in such a routine and precise manner, when something out of the ordinary pops through the pipelines, the employee is temporarily stranded on an island, cast away from the reliable world of ventis and grandes and fraps to try and figure out how to turn a volley ball into a new best friend.

There's a moment, and you can catch it in their eyes, that sheer panic takes control of their being, for instead of a name printed in the “guest” field on the receipt, there are two consonants squeezed together, and nothing more.

As panic seamlessly mutates into “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?,” other “work appropriate” responses start to take shape. The flash cards of useful tips handed down by management start flickering by, with only nano-seconds to produce the correct one. 

Usually, the first card that turns up a positive response is “blame and rise above.”

“They must have entered this wrong. ROD, your order is ready, ROD, or ROB.”

The second most popular stop position on the meter is “Assume the computer is right.”

“Uuuurdd. Double maximo for Errrrd.” They keep trying to stretch the “R” sound into some kind of vowel, sounding more like motor engines revving, while imagining to themselves what kind of exotic place I must be from where they can string letters like R and D together and make a name. Then when they see just a goofy white boy flailing up to the counter, they say “Where are you from, son?” And when I say “East county,” they nod with a half smile pretending that they know what that means.

The third most common reaction is to dissolve into the panic- “You could get fired for this.”

“Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm totally going to screw this up. R .... uh .... D, no, ROAD.”

My favorite version of this story happened while getting lunch the other day at El Pollo Loco , a crazy chicken fast food joint in California. I watched the sweet and tiny abuelita shuffle up to the counter with my order. I saw her take a look at the receipt. She took a breath as if she were going to make an attempt, but she totally swallowed it. Right before the sound was due to leave her throat, all her muscles sent an order to constrict, and she closed right up. This is the card called “Mission: Abort.”

“Pollo bowl,” she announced.

The attempt was brave, and I appreciated it. Figuring that English was probably her second language, I was humbled by the fact that in Spanish, the name RD is much harder to pronounce than “ar Deee”. “ErrE Deh” would be some kind of Spanish equivalent. There are like three stresses, the R is rolled, and the D comes out with enormous thud, both in its attack and release. Unless you do tongue pilates, you may not get through it all. 

Most of us wouldn't even know where to begin with the Chinese name “Xu.” I think our inclination would be to take a breath, then just go with “Pollo bowl!” It's like the English name “Sue,” but I think the sound is colorfully laced with tones that come out only through the trained pallet of native speakers. 

My least favorite card of all, and this is never funny, is the joker card.

“What is this, RD? Research and Development!”

“Receiving and Delivery!”

Unless, of course, the humor is an attempt to be flirty and you're a cocky but not self absorbed honey who has no inhibitions about being photographed for BUTT magazine, and the drink-code scrawled on my cup is actually your number.

But that's usually when I have to play my “The barista does NOT have a crush on you” card, so I can act disaffected when you ask “Is that a Polaroid camera?” when really on the inside I'm txting like crazy “OMG OMG OMG OMG.”

It did take a barista, at Starbucks of all places, to recognize my plight, and met me at the battle ground with an offering of peace that blew my mind.

Now, my slight against Starbucks (which is an attitude that extends towards most of commercial/popular/corporate culture) does need to be explained, justified and defended a little bit here. I always question the validity of making a point if you need to go through a power point presentation of defenses to prove its truth. “Who are you trying to convince anyway?” is the line that always comes to mind when I go on for too long explaining any one thing. 

So, I'll try to convince myself that my indignation comes from a place of symbolic gesturing, while pointing to a much larger societal discomfort.

WHAT?

Okay, I'm only saying Starbucks sucks in the sense that corporate America is man-scaping the happy trail of modern existence into an inevitable blow hole of complacency and obsession. What is it we're missing so much in our lives that we need to pornographize our brains with images that tell us we're not good enough and we need more? Or maybe we want more and don't need it? Or maybe we forgot what the difference is, and, wait, what are we in line for, again?

The sense of security that I might hear my name repeated back to me without making it a “thing” is one those things I seemed to find myself in line for.

This particular barista could see something deep coming out of me when I opened my mouth and expanded my chest to deliver a very deliberate and precise “R” “D”. 

Without skipping a beat, the barista said “Like this?”

He showed me the cup with my name on it:

AGRH DEE

He did it. He cracked the code of what it is I've been getting at all this time. Honestly, I would switch the order of the G and R so it reads more like pirate talk, “Argh...” But he was doing it off the cuff in a matter of seconds, so I take it that's what he meant.

It's deep, it's guttural, it's two sounds, two syllables, and definitely not “Ardi” or anything where the stress would be over the R. 

In this way, the attending server would need only to allow the moment of panic to turn into a moment of relying on a most basic instinct- sounding it out. With more than just the two letters of the name to sound out the beginning and end, they have enough information to get a running start. The loop is complete, the connection is made.

Argh Dee. I am in love. By the style of the writing, I want to say he's also a graffiti artist. I'm very in love.

From going through all of this, I can safely say, this entire situation doesn't even need to happen at all. The whole song and dance of tying people's names to their orders in no way is reflective of the situation that brings about the interaction, which is ubiquitously to consume something.

And if your reaction to such an attitude is “Well, how else would you know your order is ready?” or “Well, it's nice,” then for that, I am glad it exists.

For the record, it stands for Ronald Daniel, which is not a secret. I've never been good at lying about what it stands for and wish I could say I have a favorite fake version. It cracks me up on the occasion when people hear that the R stands for Ronald, the first thing they think is the D must stand for Donald. I understand why you'd have that reaction, but, really, Ronald Donald? I only ever went by anything other than RD in high school, where I was Rawn. Hopefully that means all my friends from high school can't find me on Facebook.. I prefer no periods between the letters, and as long as you digested the concept that it's two letters and not “Ardi”, you can call me any two initials that come to your mind when you first meet me, and you'll ask a few times “JR?” and I'll tell you and it'll eventually stick. 

Or I could just go all out with, IT'S ARGH DEE, matey.

The Hardest Candy To Swallow

I didn't want to like Madonna's new record Hard Candy. As a rule of being a rock snob, I avoid all association with Justin Timberlake. “What-what” and “uh-uh”s are never things I like singing along to.

“Damn that Justin Timberlake,” I protested, fists waving in the air. “How old is he? And why does he get to work with Madonna?? His songs are just Michael Jackson rip offs anyway. Am I just jealous, or is he really lame? I can't wait until he gets fat.”

“Oh, relax. Within two months you'll be saying, 'but you know the way they do that particular drum beat in that one part of that one song is pretty cool.'” My sweetheart knows my ability argue my way into liking anything I want to like all too well.

Despite the well-drawn facades I keep up about being a rock and roller, and a deep academically minded thinker about music, the truth is, when Madonna came popping out of a cake wearing a wedding dress and began to roll around on the floor at the inaugural MTV Awards in way back in 1984, it enraptured me in such a way that I still find myself reeling from its spell.

Since about the age of 13, however, pop music has rarely been able to hold my interest. And so, my unyielding commitment to Madonna is the glaring anomaly in my otherwise peaked interest in grungy guitars and mosh pits. But I make a lot of grand claims about how she's really quite punk-rock with her no-nonsense attitude, and so can easily make the logical jump from screamy indie-rockers who want to take the man down, to Madonna, who wants to be the man.

But people's tastes in music are probably no psychologically different than sexual fetishes. Music that fits a psychologically satisfying set of standards to the personality, a certain place or time, are bound to have an effect akin to how your body and brain make connections to arousal and esteem. I make allowances for Madonna's music because I want to. It's deeply satisfying to hear her voice, it is comforting and almost womb-like.

One day while having the song “Candy Shop” from the new record stuck in my head, I realized I was really into the way the chorus has a call-and-response structure, where each line has a chance to repeat, “I'll be your one stop (one stop) / Candy shop (candy shop)”. It was a good gimmick to have in a song, and made the choruses kind of special, something to look forward to. It reminded me of the way there is a lot of space in the verses of Pink Floyd's “Us and Them” giving each line an extended echo, “Us...us...us...us...us and them...them...them...them...” I wondered if any of my songs had that kind of architecture. I don’t think so, but I’m sure it’ll be in the back of my mind when playing with new riffs. And Ben was totally right, I dismissed my dismissal of the song based on some random beat structure I happened to like.

I'm also already addicted to the way she sounds live singing “My sugar is raw!” just from having searched on You Tube for videos from her recent promotional gigs celebrating the new album's release. It reminds me of how her voice feels when it vibrates through an arena and strikes your body, completely captivating you.

“My sugar is raw!” she screams out over the music, her live voice definable over the pre-recorded one she typically sings on top of. It's like, she's really there. She's really on stage dancing her little heart out and trying to keep up with the singing. It's like the first time I ever saw her on that MTV awards stage, chubby thighs exposed, yelling “can you feel my heart beat...” slamming her lace covered palms against the mic twice in a row. She's alive and actively trying to expose some part of herself, and not just a studio gimmick or media headline. She's really THERE.

“She can't even sing!” My mom always hated the way Madonna sang, but I never quite understood why. In light of everything she seemed to stand for, her actual singing ability was immaterial. What I was responding to was the freedom in the spirit she presented; the unapologetic attitude she carried in light of her singing abilities. That has always been the point, and I've never seen her waiver from that.

Her voice has become so distinctive to me, it's hard to imagine a world without having ever heard it. I get that she may not have the prettiest singing voice, but there are qualities in it that I might compare to fine wines, flavors that I swill around and let percolate through every sense while radiating throughout my body. She is like a rare bird perched out on a limb. I just want to bask in the glory of her song and beautiful presence. I want to hear it and feel it blanket all over me.

In many ways, I have two mommies.

The First Hallucination

I couldn't go to bed last night because there were people in the shower.

That was the best answer I could come up with when Beverly stomped out of her tent, haphazardly dressed in uggs, sweats and ratty amber bed head. It was probably six in the morning, and she was the first of the campers up, except me, but I had been up all night.

Family vacations were an extreme rarity in my childhood. I was pretty content, being an only child, to spend my time not spent in school absorbed in my imagination. My back yard was kind of magical wonderland where I was king, and so having to stuff a cranky family into a car to go somewhere else to relax was an odd concept. But occasionally another family would reach out to us and we would agree on a big family camp-out. These “family oriented” campgrounds were far from “roughing it” or anything I really consider camping these days. Their idea of nature survival necessities included such items as pools, large-screen tv rooms, ice cream vendors, and full service showers.

By the time I was in sixth grade, the Majors family, of whom Beverly was the mother, had been a staple of my family's 4th of July parties and Uno nights for quite some time. I'm not sure how our families knew each other, other than our fathers were some how connected, probably through work as is how most of these things happen. The Majors father Charles, as his name might imply, was really an all-American family guy, worked hard all his life, four kids, white picket fence, and probably a boat by now. Their youngest child and only daughter, Penny, was my babysitter, and the only one I had any kind of connection to. But when she wasn't being paid to show me Nightmare on Elm Street movies, she was more interested in things like high school.

I was relieved when Beverly came out of the tent, because I knew my ordeal was finally over, but I had no idea what I was going to say, or how I would explain the events of the evening. I had been exposed the elements all night, and I felt like a block of ice, seated in a cheap camping chair half folded in on itself, barely able to move. Meanwhile, the Majors kids were tucked away twenty feet from me inside my dad's camper truck, where I was supposed to be, asleep on the hard truck-bed, in my sleeping bag with them.

Are you okay, honey? Do you need some cocoa?

I just nodded and grunted yes.

Looks like you're not having any luck with this campfire. Let me help you out here.

The magic concoction of camp fire, boiling water, Swiss Miss cocoa powder, the steam rising up to my face thawing my frozen nose which could sense its chocolaty goodness, and the sweet warmth touching my lips and spilling into my body, almost instantly rejuvenated me.

So, tell me again, what are you doing up so early?

The inside of my brain was quickly unreeling the events of the evening and piecing together the random images that flashed before me... my substitute English teacher, bees, ghost showers. I some how knew that what my brain was telling me must be false, and yet it wasn't a dream. At some point, I was speaking Greek. I hadn't thought about how I might explain it, so I just let the words float out.

All your kids are in the back of the truck. That's where I'm supposed to be too. We all got the idea to sleep in the camper, scrunched up like sardines in the bed of the truck. I waited until the fire had burnt out before going to bed. Only, when I got to my sleeping bag, it was ice cold, and I literally could not get in it. The whole bag had been zipped open, and the insides were pressed up against the cold sides of the bed of the truck, and the whole thing was an ice sheet. I thought if I could re-start the fire, then I could get my body warm enough to thaw out the sleeping bag, and then I'd be set. I was already pretty cold, as the camp fire stopped giving off any kind of effective heat long before it went out.

This is when I discovered, of course, whatever it was I thought I knew about camp fires was wrong. Between all the lighter fluid and starter logs we have, I thought for sure, something would start. But I kid you not, nothing. And we need some more lighter fluid by the way.

That's when I headed for the bathrooms. I figured if nothing else, I could at least get shelter from the elements by being in there, and maybe even crash on one of the benches in the showers.

But guess what I found when I went into the bathroom.

People taking showers.

It must have been 2 or 3 in the morning by this point. I just kind of hung back, and carefully gazed to see if I could make out what was going on in the showers. I could see the steam, and feel the humidity in the air, I could hear the splashing of water. I could see images of people in the showers.

But that was just it, they were images, not real people. The closer I'd get to them, the cloudier everything would get until I'd realize I was inside the stall, and whoever I thought was there, was definitely not there. But as soon as I'd leave the stall, they'd re-appear. I somehow thought that my being in the shower stall prohibited their shower taking, and so I stayed in the non-shower part of the bathrooms.

That's when the handyman would come in and start making repairs to the toilet. Every ten minutes, I looked it up on the “maintenance log” on the bathroom door. You could see it, 3:10, 3:20, 3:30, 3:40, all with his big fat “XL” initial next to it. His name was Xavier Lopez. But like the ghost shower'ers, he'd just kind of evaporate if I'd get too close.

Oh, honey, this is fascinating. Keep talking to me while I start making breakfast. I think I can hear Charles waking up.

I followed her around while she gathered various breakfast goods out of a cooler and turned into Betty Crocker camping edition.

And so I'd go back and forth between the bathrooms and trying to make more camp fires. I learned to expect the shower people and Xavier while in the bathroom, and even after a while, came to enjoy their company.

How do you want your eggs, hon?

Scrambled, thanks.

Anyway, and this is the crazy part, I was here, by the fire ring, when out of no where appears my English teacher. Actually, he's my future-permanent-substitute-teacher for my English class. He was a well known sub who I've had in all sorts of classes, like Math and History, and even Social Studies and PE last year. Anyway, he's a well known and liked guy, and he had been picked to be the replacement for Mrs. Elbie who was going on maternity leave. Actually, this entire trip I've been hoping that Mrs. Elbie has been in the middle of a very long and painful labor, and when we get back, we'll have Mr. Caspers for the rest of the year. That Mrs. Elbie is such a bitch. I can't wait for her to be gone. She once said she “cured” somebody of homosexuality. (Okay, that last part I didn't say, but I wish I could have without bursting into tears or being horrifyingly embarrassed.)

Good morning honey! Do I smell eggs?

AND COFFEE! (hand me the instant, darling.) Morning Pumpkin! Do you want bacon or sausage?

Both!

What about your cholesterol?

Do you have to talk in front of everybody, darling?

It's just RD. Did you let the dog out to go pee yet?

Good morning, RD! Yes, we're going on a walk now.

Morning Chuck.

Sorry babe, you were saying...

So my future English teacher is standing in front of me, and he decides it's time for Greek lessons. No kidding. Greek.

BOWSER, COME! COME BOWSER COME! COME ON! AWWWW, GOOD BOWSER!

Ah-hem. Besides Alpha-Beta, I know next to nothing about the Greek language. I know I believed whatever he was saying as being Greek, and that I was repeating what he was saying. So as far as I can tell, I was speaking Greek. I'd be curious to know what I really sounded like, of course, but we really got into some good vocabulary lessons.

Charles started making a spectacle of their giant dog running towards them. His ability to get into full blown ridiculous puppy talk was embarrassing even at low doses.

BOWSERWOWSERBOWSERWOWSER! OH BOWSER, YOU DON'T SPEAK GREEK, DO YOU? NO BOWSER. ALPHA-BETA-WETA-CRETA-METAPHETASETAGEISHAFACIARASIR-WAWAWAWAWA... COME ON BOWSER, LET'S GO FOR A WALKIEWALKIEWALKIEWALKIEWALKWALKWALKIEPOOOOOO.

...and so I left my English teacher by the fire pit when I realized my mom's car was still unlocked, and I could just get in there to get warm.

ARE YOU TAKING BOWSER FOR A WALK, DAD?

One of the Majors kids had propped up having heard the dog being called, and appeared at the rear window of the tail gate.

YES SON, WE'RE GOING NOW.

WAIT FOR ME, I'M COMING.

But you'll never guess what...

PAUL, ASK PENNY AND JACK WHAT THEY WANT FOR BREAKFAST! SORRY HON, WHAT?

WHAT, MA?

BREAKFAST... WHAT DO YOU GUYS WANT?

ARE THERE ANY COCO-PUFFS LEFT, MOM?

More Majors kids appeared at the tailgate.

Anyway, when I got inside the car, the outside of the car became covered in BEES!

Bees? NO HON, THERE ARE NO MORE BEES, I MEAN COCO FLAKES WHATEVER LEFT.

OH HEY RD! WHEN DID YOU GET TO BED LAST NIGHT? HOW DID YOU GET UP BEFORE US?

The weight of the three sleepy teenagers hanging off the improperly latched tail of the truck-bed was too much for it to handle. It tipped open and sent them clumsily spilling out on top of each other with their sleeping bags still sort of on.

OH NO WATCH OUT!

The excitement alerted Bowserwowser's attention, and he went scurrying over to see what all the catastrophe was about. In his rush, his leash snagged on the camping stove, sending skillets, eggs, bacon and sausage tumbling to the dirt, which ended up being the prize for Bowsiewowsie.

BOWSER NOOOOOOOOOOO!

So, you have these bees, enveloping the entire car, and

yeah,

it was, uh,

pretty interesting...

and well, it looks like Bowser's got the mess taken care of. I'll just go take my hot chocolate into my tent and try to sleep or something. Good night everybody!

It actually took me a couple years to recognize what had happened as a hallucination. I suspect it was caused by exhaustion and the cold, or perhaps the wild forest mushrooms. What really stuck with me about the whole adventure was having had experiences that, to my memory, feel like real experiences. As far as what we deem physically measurable, they did not happen, but it was very hard to accept that. I had real reactions to things that were just a product of chemical reactions in my head. I opened my mouth and spoke what I was convinced was a foreign language. It presented an interesting question to my impressionable mind... is what you're reacting to what's really happening? Would there have been a way to figure out that what I was experiencing wasn't real? Is there a way to figure out if this is real? Aliens?

After the car became engulfed in bees, I don't really remember what happened, other than I somehow exited the vehicle and made my way to watch the sunrise next to the cold fire pit.

Put That In Your Pipe And Smoke It

While watering my father's tropical jungle out in the eastern sticks of San Diego county, it occurred to me that my father is an alchemist. Once a barren wasteland perched on a hillside locally known as “Rattlesnake Mountain,” the now fertile soil sprouts more spectacular color, fresh scents, and abundant sounds of nature than one can adequately absorb in a lifetime. Among the bird of paradise bush, the Peruvian chirimoya trees, and alarmingly sweet and seedless tangerine trees, the desert still rears its head with the palm cactus groves just beyond the rust-wire fence, and occasional belly-up alligator lizard snacked down by one of my parents' seven-inch-tall dogs.

Lead into gold.

It has inspired the entire neighborhood to follow suit, with his trade-mark stone terraced walls, affinity for preserving the land, and patience to watch it go through constant transformation.

Likewise, my mother is an Amazonian Shaman. Though she was raised by Catholic nuns in various parts of Peru, her heritage stretches deep within the Amazon forest, from where the secrets of the sacred Ayahuasca plant whisper the formulas of the universe. She still hears these whispers, and has made it her life's quest to transcribe them in a language that's not her own.

With nothing but a point of turquoise light, she re-imagined herself in an American life, living on a mountain of rattlesnakes and black widows.

One plus one is three. And here I am.

My father is also a Freemason. As a child, I was always intrigued by the plaques on the walls of the house, filled with bizarre images of eagles with two heads, eyes on top of pyramids emanating light. I'd also snoop through his private drawers, and marvel at the strange relics he'd keep tucked away, boxes engraved with symbols that were far beyond my comprehension. I'd ask what they all meant, and he'd just shluff off answering me, usually saying he'd tell me someday when I could understand.

Eventually the plaques came down, and the hidden places developed into even deeper hidden places. I'd ask over the years, and he'd just claim to not really know, or remember, and that his membership in something called the “Scottish Rite” was of little importance to him, even though he never failed to pay his dues, and always collected the monthly newsletter that came to him.

I'd later come to discover that one of the symbols I'd see in both his secret boxes and on the Scottish Rite newsletters were the compass and the square, the symbol of the Freemasons, of which, the Scottish Rite is a branch.

“Their children all had secrecies to have their own societies...”
(“Honeycut,” RM)

Now, the Freemasons aren't a secret society, but perhaps more, a society with secrets.  Many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, were members of the Freemason society, but what it means exactly to be a member, when and where the society actually began, and details surrounding its rituals all seem to be matters of speculation fueling many to wonder what, if any importance the society had to our success as a United States, and even if their influence is the power behind the curtain.

But my father is tight lipped.

“There's a lot there,” is one of the cryptic phrases he uses these days when I ask him about it, “And it's there for me if I need it. A lot of people can claim to be masons, but not too many really understand what it really means to be one,” ... even though you might find license plate covers that say “2B1ASK1” with the compass and square symbol prominently displayed.

“I'm going to terrace that hillside and plant these corn seeds there,” he says to me, pointing at the one part of his masterpiece yard that still resembles the rest of the desert we reside in. The corn kernels aren't just any kernels, but ones specific to the Andean culture of Peru. It's interesting to note, the Incas were masters of agriculture, learning to work with the land, creating the terraced landscapes that are clearly visible in postcards of Machu Piccu.

My childhood, which was spent mostly exclusively with my mom, I consider somewhat of an apprenticeship. Early on, I learned to dismantle and let go of many “western myths” that are so pervasive in our culture. From not celebrating Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, I began to understand life as a constant gift, not something to be set aside for arbitrary dates placed on the calendar.

Before I learned about atomic structures in science class, my mom was busy showing me how we are made up of nothing more than space and vibrations.

“Put your hands up, in front of your chest, palms out.” As early as the age of six or seven, we'd stand in open fields, conducting experiments concerning the nature of the universe. “Now, I'm going to put my hands up next to yours. I'm not going to touch them. Just relax.” And within moments, the heat would transfer from her hands to mine. Then not only could I feel heat, but actual vibrations, some kind of communication between our hands.

“Do you feel it?” And when I looked at her, she was no longer my mother. She was a child, a young school girl trapped in her Catholic Peru, wanting only to dance in a most beautiful dress, as created by Incan descendants weaving the finest alpaca wool into colors conceived in imagination.

The Beaver Trilogy

The thing is, I would totally be this guy's friend.

I know this guy all too well.

The nervous laugh, the eager desperation to be on TV, the panic stricken look in the eyes that shyly tries to maintain confidence, and the Olivia Newton-John impersonation.

I know him, because I am him. I am Groovin' Gary, Olivia Newton-John impersonator at large.

I watch Trent Harris's The Beaver Trilogy, and I see a laughable but slightly pitiful character trying too hard to outrun his own shadow with Olivia Newton-John impersonations. It couldn't be more of an exact telling of my own story with Olivia Netwon-Johndom, unless it was called The Lakeside Trilogy.

It's clear to me director Trent Harris felt a similar connection with, or at least compassion for the Beaver Kid; he filmed the same story three times over six years. The first time, it was the real life version.

Salt Lake City, 1979.

Landscape shots in a snowy parking lot of a TV station. In the distance a character with yellow hair and bell bottoms can be seen taking pictures of the station's helicopter. Without warning, the documentary plunders into action with Gary introducing himself to the camera and showing off his impersonation talents including Barry Manilow and Sylvester Stallone.

As the film progresses, the audience learns that Groovin' Gary has come to the TV station from Beaver specifically to try to get on TV. By complete chance, Trent Harris, station reporter, was outside testing a new piece of equipment the station had just started using, a video camera. The divine meeting was caught on tape, and Gary's dreams of TV stardom were within reach. Harris, completely enraptured by Gary's quirky and nervous behavior, found himself driving to Beaver a few weeks later to film Gary perform as Olivia Newton-John in a town talent show, curated by Gary himself.

In the movie The Lost Highway by transcendental-horror master David Lynch, an enigmatic character with pasty face and a video camera follows lead character Fred Madison around, recording his darkest secrets and nightmares. The metaphysical twist is that the Mystery Man only goes where he is invited, leaving Fred unable to escape his own deprecating secrets as the video taped evidence mounts. This is the role Trent Harris plays in the first of his three films about the Beaver Kid. He is the mystery man Gary calls upon to bear witness and document a very personal search for liberation.

This search for liberation winds up looking more like a train wreck than anything as transcendental as say, The Motorcycle Diaries, leaving the viewer to wonder if The Beaver Trilogy is merely an exploitation, a way of making fun of the kid who you'd sort of feel sorry for and chuckle at when they'd sit on yet another tack.

But director Trent Harris clearly thought long and hard about his accidental documentary (enough to make two fictionalized versions) that he gives Groovin' Gary the chance for liberation within the wreckage of the tight black leather and bad lipstick of Olivia Newton-Don.

At first, nothing appears amiss with Gary. He seems a little quirky and overly anxious about getting on “the set,” but probably no more so than any twenty-one year old from a small town with a taste for the “New York City Rhythm.” It's not until we see him getting his make up put on by the town's mortician that it all becomes perfectly clear why Harris would spend the next six years re-telling this same exact story.

The entire make-up session includes a heroic monologue by Gary, an argument he has with himself about the validity of his performance, telling himself that he is not crazy, and that he's still “a man.” Though he never says the words, you know he's also thinking “I'm not a fag, I'm not a queer,” because he keeps reiterating how much of just a “regular guy doing outrageous things” he is.

You see something visibly happen to him while he prepares for his wigging. The posture of his body becomes painfully sad. It's as if we can see shame literally leap from his body and punch him in the face. As the lipstick get slopped all over his lips, we know everyone is secretly chuckling inside. It's also clear he knows it as well.

In 1982 I was three, and obsessed with Olivia Newton-John. Physical, her “shocking” adult contemporary number one hit, complete with a video about gay sex, had just come out, and I was smitten. I'd gaze lovingly at my Physical Tour book all day long, studying the pictures of her on a horse, swimming with dolphins, doing yoga among the Joshua Trees.

I would try to imitate them.

With the tour book in hand, I'd raid my mom's closet trying to find the perfect Olivia boots, and spend hours in front of the mirror giving myself that perfect Olivia hair-do. Luckily, my mom was there to capture it all on film, posing with my fake microphone in hand.

Now, when you see the pictures, there's nothing that shocking about them, they're just extremely cute; a four year old RD in a Strawberry Shortcake skirt parading around the house. Cute, I know. But I know that I wasn't trying to be cute, I was trying to be Olivia. I see some of those pictures, and know I was desperately trying to communicate something, even at the age of three. I was creating a private Xanadu, and I made this creation a very public thing.

I'd practice the way she'd spin around, giving her skirt enough lift to show off her little red panties; as seen in the live performance of “A Little More Love.” I'd claim to speak two languages, because I could also speak Australian, like Olivia. I would go to little-kid talent shows and lip sync “Deeper Than The Night.”

Of course, between the ages of three and ten, one hardly notices that everyone is kicking back and thinking “what the fuck is up with your kid?” Luckily grunge rock was there to pick me up when I realized that was indeed the case. I'm sure those are the perfect set of parameters under which to start listening to songs like “Jeremy.”

In the second film, Sean Penn plays the Beaver Kid. In an effort to bring some kind of closure to the Beaver Kid's story, the ending shows a distraught Penn contemplating suicide after Harris refuses Gary's request to can the footage he shot. Fearing complete humiliation, Gary tempts himself with a shotgun, but a lucky call from a friend saves the day; the caller wanted a reprise of Olivia Newton-Don's performance for a party.

For years, I hid those images of me. I never looked through family photo albums, because I couldn't bear to see that flamboyant kid, hamming it up without a care in the world. It was hard to reconcile that that was me. It's hard to reconcile, “Oh, this is called making a fool of yourself.” In a fits of desperation, I'd try to outrun that rosy cheeked and cheery kid and put him behind me forever.

But like Crispin Glover in the third installment of the series (now moved to Orkly, Idaho with the stage name of Olivia Neutron Bomb), I've since learned to put on the wig, crank up the volume, and burn rubber right out of this town.

I perform Madonna covers now.

That's why I love this guy. I'm not content to watch this trilogy and think “way to go underdog!” I want to be up there on stage with him saying, “Yeah, and can we do 'Ray Of Light' afterwards?” And then we'd get into it like no one was watching. That's what we want to happen to Gary, we want him to lose himself in his performance. We want to see him and Olivia explode like super novae. But we know that he's hopelessly caught in a black hole, a nightmare that Harris's two fictionalized accounts try to wake him up from.

I've been doing a lot of work to embrace that kid, nurture that part of me that just wants to sing and be Olivia. Like Gary, my life seems composed of many grand gestures that come off somewhat embarrassing and make people say, “Really, RD?” Trying to run away from that only brought me closer to it, like a trapped character in a David Lynch meditation. I figure, if that's what my life is composed of, I'd better be there to enjoy it. Hopefully, Groovin Gary is there to help me with the glitter tossing.

The Beaver Trilogy was featured on NPR's This American Life, the archived audio of which can be found here.

I posted the entire movie on YouTube. (Trent Harris got in touch and asked me to take the movies off youtube, so I complied quickly. He said I was able to post the first segment, but trying to re-upload the video just gives me a "copyright infringement" error. Yuck. He sells the movie from his own web site.

You Are My Fave, And I Love You

This is as much a love letter as a review of The Rentals, live at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, Ca, July 22, 2006.

I had been waiting for this moment for eleven years. I remember being 16 and seeing the Weezer video “Say It Ain’t So” for the very first time. By the age of 16, with Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd records highlighting my collection, I was already a music snob. I had dismissed Weezer as not much more than a one hit wonder; a slick creation out of L.A. backed by Ric Ocasek signed to Geffen records now that the Nirvana sound was en vogue.

“Buddy Holly” was all over the radio and MTV, the cute Happy Days gimmick putting them on the cover of Rolling Stone. So who were these guys on my TV singing a soulful song which seemed to reflect every aspect of the alcoholic-father-son relationship I was encountering at the time? And better yet, who is that gorgeous bleach blonde bassist kicking that hacky sack around? Whoever this band was, thanks to the power of MTV, I was transformed into an instant fan.

Consider my ironic dismay when the end credits popped up on the screen to reveal the band in question was Weezer.

Okay, I admit it. At least half of my interest in rock music has to do with my obsession with men. I love men because they are men, strong, unflinching, bold. But I love rock men because they are also provocative, passionate, and eager to express something to you which erupts from their veins as they strike their guitars harder, harder and harder. The grunge rock revolution allowed formerly nerdy boys to express their inner rock star with an “I’m so dorky I don’t know how hot I am” look that I lap up like sweaty balls.

Right away, there was something that connected me to Matt Sharp. I had dismissed his band before seeing his face, or really listening to what his band mate Rivers Cuomo was actually singing about. But after our introduction in the "Say It Ain’t So" video, I allowed everything Matt Sharp to become a part of my psyche. His eyes glowed with innocence, his receding hairline suggested a solid masculinity, and his falsetto back up vocals gave a subtle nod to his feminine side.

Consider my delight when I discovered he was putting his own band together for fun between Weezer affairs: The Rentals.

On the surface, The Rentals were not much different than Weezer, but slightly more gimmicky. Same song structures, basic song meanings, but add in 70’s vintage Moog synthesizers, old-man-dress-up suits and Eastern European accents, and there you have The Rentals. Beneath his gimmicks, Matt Sharp was an artist busy being confused, busy trying to understand the confusion, and busy reminding people it’s okay to never stop dreaming. I can’t imagine being 16 and not having Matt Sharp’s shoulder to cry on, lap to lay on and hand to hold.

After some not-so-kind words in the press between Rivers and Matt, a bleak sophomore Weezer effort, and a long unsatisfying delay between Rentals records, it seemed the future of the Rentals was uncertain. I tried to not think that I would never have that ultimate experience of being in the same room with the man I crushed so hard for, watching him sing “I still believe you should be with me.” It seemed the nerd glasses and banks of Moog machines were forever gone, but yet, throughout all my CD purges, I held tight to my copy of Return of the Rentals, knowing a piece of my youth was embedded between the ones and zeros of the CD.

China Is Amazing

1: There is no sun in Beijing. The humidity is stifling. We get on a bus for the Forbidden City in central Beijing, and when no more people can possibly fit on the bus, more people get onto the bus. I can’t help but stare at everything. I wish I could be trapped in time, slow it down so a few seconds lasts years and I can observe every last detail: the way random English text like “Wiggle” and “We’re Crazy” appears out of nowhere - the way Chinese people don’t really smile much, but when they do, their eyes disappear and their faces light up completely - the way bicyclists load every last personal belonging (or perhaps recyclable bottle) into plastic bags onto their bikes and effortlessly balance this among the nightmare that is Chinese traffic – the way the Mao Zedong’s charmless stare pierces you as you walk through the gates of the Forbidden City.

2: It’s difficult at best to be in Tiananmen Square (a place that literally translates to Heaven Peace Gate) without thinking of the tanks mowing down students in 1989, and how there is no sign that any thing of the sort ever happened, but some how knowing that if protests ever erupted again, tanks would appear as if they never left. I want to connect myself to every moment of history on this concrete square, but am pelted by every last souvenir seller. I’m not sure why they keep offering me stuff I don’t want at half the price of their original offer… I just don’t want a Chinese-opera-mask-kite… really. I just don’t want one. But I do want to watch the locals fly them, tied end to end, one hundred at a time, soaring high into some kind of Heavenly Peace.

3: I couldn’t help but think, “Are you kidding me?” as we approached the Great Wall of China. Okay, first of all, there’s a “bear park” at The Wall. Not only is it a bear park, it’s a bear park with a handful of the mangiest, saddest looking bears, one of whom spun around in circles to get fruit treats. What?!?! Then, there’s a roller coaster. Yes, there’s a roller coaster at the Great Wall. You can take it up to the top of the wall, and then there’s a fun-ish looking “crazy” route to get back down. (At this point, I’m thinking, “for my next trick, I’m going to penetrate the wall with my body and reappear on the other side!”) Then you’re packed like sardines through the ups and downs of this wall that appears completely arbitrarily and out of context to the rest of the amusements around it. For real??? Is this what’s become of your most treasured landmark? The one thing that defines the country (that you claim to be visible from space)? Then the “so loud you can hear it in Mongolia” Chinese language loudspeakers start going off with a resounding “YES.”

4: We’ve just finished an exhaustive Chinese language tour in Xian, home of the 2,000 year old Terracotta Army (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_army ). We haven’t had a clue all day what’s going to happen next, as the only English our adorable tour guide knows is “Hurry friends!” We think we’ve seen it all, when the bus pulls up to some random building. It looks as if most people are exiting the bus, and perhaps some people have given the tour guide extra money, so we just follow as dumb American tourists will do. We walk into a room and have a seat while a woman gives some sort of talk or lecture for about fifteen minutes, during which we bob our heads and smile politely. Suddenly the door opens up and twenty Chinese flood the room with buckets of steaming something, and people start taking off their socks and shoes. What is going on?!?! It looks safe, and other people are into it, so when prompted with hand gestures and facial expressions, we dip our feet into the warm brown water. It was some kind of herbal “detox” type thing, and after soaking for a good little while, Chinese foot therapy students come in and give each of us full on foot massages. As soon as the two girls assigned to us see they get the two Americans, they erupt into laughter. All the students are pretty hip and cool looking, and give massages like nobody’s business. I sit back and take it all in. Am I alive right now?

Zero, Zwan and the Zeitgeist: Billy Corgan Resurrects The Smashing Pumpkins

Ben and I have a really funny way of talking to each other.

Things that are deep and serious to one, are just blips of thought to the other. Most of the time, we get along quite swimmingly, so completely enamored and giddy with one another, that we forget about this vital incongruence until one of us bulldozes the other down with some flippant comment about people buying vodka in plastic bottles or the sacredness of family values.

One such moment occurred while listening to The Smashing Pumpkins song “Zero” on the radio.

Now, at the risk of losing street credit with all my cool music friends, I love The Smashing Pumpkins. I haven't always; I was too young to fully appreciate their first record, Gish, upon its release, and I was too leery about their second, Siamese Dream, to rush out and buy it right away. With the single “Today” being all over MTV, it was hard to take The Pumpkins seriously as anything other than another band riding the loud/quiet-alt-rock wave that finally broke through to the mainstream thanks to Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

But it was a street performance of “Cherub Rock” by a couple lesbians on my first outing to the gay part of San Diego, Hillcrest, that won me over. I was 15, and these two beautiful ladies with acoustic guitars were standing on the side walk crooning “We are frightened and we're scared,” and finally yelling out the song's anthem, “Let me out.” That's when I decided Billy Corgan was worth my devoted attention, and that I was ready to come out of the closet.

When 1995's two-disc epic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was dropped on the world, I absorbed it thoroughly and completely. I don't say that to mean I wore silver pants and a “Zero” shirt for two years. What I mean is, I thought long and hard about what it must have meant to Corgan to put such raw emotions onto such a large slate. I thought a lot about what he wanted to get across, what it meant now that Nirvana was over, and that the alt-rock movement had all but sold out. I heard my own weakness come out in his voice, I heard my own disenchantment, my own confusion, and my own desire to break out of every box the world seeks to put people into.

Myself, being solidly indoctrinated into the worlds of U2 and Pink Floyd, I found their influence all over Corgan's ideals and desires to be bold and unflinching; how he was sewing seeds to indulge Bono's hometown hero status, and Roger Water's urge to build The Wall between himself and the mainstream. I could see the calculated risks he was taking, and the 1970's arena rock fantasies he was engaging. I spent hours, days, weeks refashioning the album's track order, trying to make it more impressive and less punishing. I'd spend years wondering, had it been a single album, if Corgan wouldn't have been so pigeon-holed by the media as a blubbering ego-maniac. I still to this day can't help but wonder, if the Pumpkins had called it a day after Mellon Collie, how much easier it would be today to stand up and say “I love The Smashing Pumpkins.”

My sweetheart, Ben, on the other hand, loves the song that goes “...the killer in me is the killer in you,” and has even seen them a few times in concert, but probably couldn't tell you anything about the shows other than “they were fun.” He probably didn't know the song we were listening to on the radio was called “Zero,” or that he owned the album it was on. All that's fine. I've come to accept my music-nerdness and realize that everybody's got something they can geek-out on.

Then the line in the song came, “And God is empty, just like me.”

Ben looked at me.

“What a stupid thing to say.”

I think Ben could visibly see to breaks go off in my head.

The Most Amazing Album Of All Time

Every music nerd has one: an album that sticks out in their heads as having a perfect combination of all of their favorite qualities in music, and are willing to defend the assertion that no one will ever be able to produce another album as unique and perfectly made. You can probably guess, and you'd be right, that I've thought about mine for years: probably a decade and a half by now. And for most of that time, no album has surpassed The Unforgettable Fire by U2.

U2's fourth album, released in 1984, was a radical departure for the band, musically, lyrically, spiritually. Their first three records set forth a U2 born of the post-punk 80's movement, with gnashing guitars, militaristic drums, and a pouty Bono delivering such lyrical masterpieces as “Twilight,” “Tomorrow” and “New Years Day” all before the age of 24. But for their fourth album, U2 were interested in more than just taking the next step forward; they wanted to completely change the musical pallet from which they worked.

With the creator of the ambient genre, Brian Eno, and a man whose now legendary sound can be heard all over the best albums of the 80's (including Peter Gabriel´s SO and Bob Dylan´s Oh Mercy), Daniel Lanois, both at the helm of the controls, U2 and company set up shop in a castle in rural Ireland to create The Unforgettable Fire.

Radical departures is something fans of U2 have gotten used to over the decades. It's what made being a fan of theirs so rewarding, always being exposed to different shades of the musical spectrum, and in turn, being opened to a whole new catalog of artists to explore. It has become the key factor I look for in an artist; the desire to keep taking risks and the willingness to sacrifice image for inspiration. This album was U2's first huge risk in this way, and with it, they showed they weren't pussy-footing around.

The Unforgettable Fire is a bold and grown up statement which seeks to pump the heart by delivering tender and subtle touches, rather than violent jolts. And while banks of synthesizers and heavy effects pave the way for most of the album, it manages to not ignore its roots in punk rock Dublin, but expand upon them and bring them to new levels. U2 use their Dublin “art-fag” ideals to unapologetically deliver lyrics made up on the spot, use feedback to orchestrate guitar solos, create new songs by slowing down drum tracks and improvising on top of them.

Lyrically, The Unforgettable Fire marks the beginning of empathy in U2's music. No longer the white-flag-waving soldier boy, Bono found himself transmuting his anger into questions that tack to the heart of human nature. Taking a more Gandhian approach to his lyrics, Bono exchanged his war anthems of “There's many lost / But tell me, who has won?” for hopeful approaches with “Sleep / Sleep tonight / And may your dreams be realized”.

And therein lies the album's greatest triumph, hope. This album represents one of those rare moments in popular music when tragedy, despair and loss are overcome by the courage to see the beauty in every moment, to take the leap and dive into unknown territory. It dares the listener to dream, and in a theme that would come up a lot in U2's catalog, to “dream out loud.”

Of the collection of albums generally considered the greatest by contemporary rock fans, most all of them are marked by a sudden and unique shift, a “waking up” from the artist. It's when they've tapped into a clear message that points to something fundamental about the function of human nature, a message delivered with the force an ship tearing through ice in the arctic, and the abandonment of a four year old discovering finger painting. It is as if the artist had been possessed, and returned to earth with a new gospel; words and music that speak to the most basic parts of our hearts, that seek to bring us out of that which blinds us and into a new realm of understanding life. The Unforgettable Fire is the gospel on hope.

From the moment the album starts, it takes the listener in flight, with the thunderous roll of “A Sort of Homecoming.” Within the first minute of the The Unforgettable Fire, Bono is inviting us to cross “the fields of mourning” to “lights in the distance.” He wastes no time with delivering the punch of his lust for life, trying to shows us that the peace we seek is already there, we just have to walk towards it. Whether or not Bono himself can fully realize this becomes the underlying question he seeks to answer within the poetry of The Unforgettable Fire.

Blanketing the song in warmth, The Edge's grand and shimmering guitar marks the beginning of sound that would permeate most rock music in the 80's, and even become a major influence for Radiohead's 90's classic, The Bends.

No doubt under the influence of Brian Eno, many of the songs take shape as free jams with various parts popping up in an almost formless way. Lyrical stanzas appear seemingly out of nowhere, but all of them together provide for a uniquely crafted and excellently executed experiment. Half-way through the first song comes one such seemingly random departure, a chant, sounding perhaps American Indian in origin:

Oh coma way o coma wa o coma o coma way say I

Indeed, as two of its songs reference Martin Luther King, and with another titled “Elvis Presley And America”, The Unforgettable Fire was the beginning of what would become known as “The American Era” for U2, which was fully embraced on their follow-up, The Joshua Tree, and overwhelmingly expanded upon with Rattle And Hum.

Why Wake-n-Bake Is Always The Best Idea

I am set to jet. I want to be out of the house by 9:30 this morning. I’ll take the bike path to the coffee shop, and start writing by 10. Okay, it is a holiday, and I don’t actually have any time-sensitive projects to complete; it’s just my own sense of self-motivation that drives me to have something concrete completed (or at least started) at an hour still considered morning, not “almost lunch.”

Oh, I know. I’ll get things started by smoking a bowl first! There’s still about ten minutes before I leave, and it’ll add a “footloose and fancy-free” atmosphere to the bike ride. I’m fantasizing about a beautiful and leisurely bike stroll through the bike path with the trees, creeks, crazy homeless guys and playing dogs. It conjures up images of Kermit and Miss Piggy biking together in The Muppet Movie. That settles it, pot before bike ride.

Okay, I’ll just pop in this U2 DVD of their live show in ’97 that’s been hanging out in this box for a while. I’ll watch the intro while I finish this bowl, then I’ll be on my way. Easy.

I remember U2 in ’97. It’s a little embarrassing now, but I saw nine of their shows that year, all over the US, and a couple in Dublin. It was definitely the flashier, more flamboyant U2, and had the songs survived the test of time and not kicked their ass on tour, it would probably still be cool to like that era, in the way it’s still cool to like Ziggy Stardust. But sadly, the sparkle lemon soured the entire tour, as did U2’s sudden change of heart to do Greatest Hits tours in order to save face.

It’s sort of like U2’s own fame outstretched their ability to connect with their audience. This is exactly what happened to Pink Floyd soon after they released The Dark Side Of The Moon, arguably the greatest album ever made.

It’s kind of a funny societal feedback loop: the success of the greatest album ever made alienated its creators from the people it was intended for. But the fact that so many people responded to these intentions is exactly why it’s so popular to begin with.

Can you imagine having just recorded Dark Side, listening to it back for the first time and thinking, “Wow, this is really something special here”?

Daft Punk Arrived In Robot Uniforms On A Spaceship Pyramid Of Light: Snapshots From Coachella ’06

I didn’t get sun burnt. I didn’t get dehydrated. I didn’t partake in the $8 beers. But I did see thousands of hot shirtless men, complete with butt cleavage. I did say to myself “I’m in camping in the middle of the desert, and the best I can do is have a $5 iced mocha?” I did have Madonna, Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, Tool, Cat Power and Sigur Ros completely rule my world. And I got really stoned. This year’s Coachella festival was a smashing success as far as I’m concerned. Here are a few snapshots:

#1: As soon as I finished pounding in my last tent steak, I reclined into my beach chair with my head tilted up to the evening desert sky, sparked up a doobie to properly kick off the weekend, and listened to the karaoke being cranked out from the club house at the other end of the festival grounds. If there’s ever a time to listen to karaoke, it’s at a rock festival that people had to drive hundreds of miles to get to. It means that these people have been belting out their favorite tunes in their cars for the last several hours, and are ready to rock out. By the time some guy gave Billy Corgan a run for his money with a full-lunged rendition of the Pumpkin’s “Stand Inside Your Love,” I was reaching that point in a high where the world starts to fragment, and everything begins to look foreign but exciting, like being a toddler and realizing you can hold your own head up. I found myself watching the other campers setting up camp and thinking “Man, aren’t tents weird?” or “What kind of word is ‘cooler’ ?” Meanwhile a gal came up to the karaoke mic and started channeling the spirit of Lita Ford during some kind of crazed metal-thon. For as much as the Lita sound-a-like was getting into her groove, I was diving into her voice. It was sending me all over the Coachella fields, like a screaming eagle picking up its prey. But then I began to realize I couldn’t distinguish any repeating choruses, and the music seemed to just keep going, and going and going, losing any sense of rhythm or structure, in and out of time signatures, yet still moving along at lightning speed as if it had someplace to go. I got lost in this twisted world of melting beats and arbitrary bass lines. As Lita’s voice became more intense, my eagle became tangled in this web of unending noise and weirdness. What on earth kind of music was this? Then I remembered where I was, Coachella, where Tool would be headlining on the main stage Sunday night. Tool, a band who is known for their dark, structurally complex, epic metal-laced tunes, that I actually enjoy quite a bit. Ah yes. This was a Tool song. That’s why it wasn’t making any sense. Freed from the haze of confusion, my eagle soared again, coming down gently and satisfied.

#2: Another great stoner Tool moment occurred right before their set as the stage was being set up for their massive use of spiritual / introspective claymation / animation projections. I’ve seen many a Tool video before, so I’m somewhat familiar with their use of dark imagery that includes unique manipulations of the human body. I saw a weird brown and jagged appendage hanging from the top of the light rig down to the bottom of the stage. There was a large bulb type thing towards the top of the appendage, and given my knowledge of Tool, it wasn’t surprising to think they’d have a giant intestine as the backdrop of their stage. In fact, it was kind of cool, and it was getting me really excited for their show. It’s cute that things like this go on in my head, but the reality of it was that there was no backdrop for their stage. What I was looking at was a palm tree behind the stage. I looked around the entire Coachella site, and realized, “Oh, these giant intestines with weird bulbs at the top of them are all over the place. Perhaps the simplest answer is, they’re palm trees, RD.”

A Stoner Meditation on Madonna

The ability to create music is mankind's single greatest achievement. And the marriage of music and pot is the absolute most divine experience we are allowed to have as humans. Greater than any pleasure this world affords us, when pot and music collide, rainbows explode and the heavenly sounds bring us to the angels that make the world safe and perfect.

So when a buddy of mine sent me a whole box full of music DVDs recently, it seemed only logical to me to smoke a whole bunch of weed and watch Madonna's Drowned World Tour DVD. I admit, I find it hard to reconcile my appreciation of the pop queen with my undying devotion to guitars and anti-pop. I'm sure most rock fags born in the late 70's / early 80's share the same story: Like A Virgin was our first record, and our parents really started freaking out once we started doing dance routines to "Dress You Up" in the living room in front of guests. But around the time that Hair Metal bands stopped being cool and alt-rock started becoming mainstream, we realized just how hot guys with guitars actually are when they're not hidden behind all that spandex and make-up. Suddenly pop music and beat boxes were for lame-o's, and it was all about gtrs and feedback. But god help me if I'm getting rid of my Vogue cassingle, okay?

Since my conversion to rock music, Madonna has stayed in my periphery pretty consistently; not exactly checking out everything she was doing, but staying curious and aware enough to know she was still holding up her end of the punk rock deal: stay true to yourself and never regret your actions. So with that, I knew her first concert film since her days of running around naked with Naomi Campbell would still be thought provoking, hard edged, and a real piece of art regardless of how many children's books she'd written.

As both the pot and Madonna started to tear into the show, it struck me how absurd the idea of a rock show actually is. In what universe is it expected and okay to drop wads of cash to watch someone you've never met before dance and sing for two hours in a concrete sports arena filled with laser beams, bright lights, and lots and lots of smoke? And why Madonna? Okay, I know *why* Madonna, but I mean, why not make that the way we celebrate the arrival of the trash man? Could you imagine, a giant disco dumpster pimping down the street with lasers and a dance floor? And town residents camped out on the curb with their cash in hand, hoping to get a bootleg t-shirt of the event, 'cause it may not happen next week… the trash man has had this route for thirty years, and this may be his last time around! And OMG, were you there for the last tour when he was wearing the yellow jump suit? Yeah, it was hot!

Of all the billions of people on the planet, and all the different ways to celebrate art, there's Madonna, on a stage in front of tens of thousands of people, dancing her little heart out singing about a ray of light and how she feels like she just got home. And we love it, we eat it up like candy. But in the maze of giant coliseums, expensive souvenirs, and Ticketmaster fees, Madonna is doing more than just giving people a good time and supporting the entertainment industry, she's doing something that has the ability to change people's lives. She's cultivating this energy, that when magnified by the thousands of people gathered to see her, has the power to inspire people to really want to become better versions of themselves. She's saying "Hey, if we just get together to dance and sing for a little bit, we'll all feel a lot better. And if a whole bunch of people feel a lot better, then maybe the whole world will feel just a little bit better." Even if you dismiss her for not having the best voice, or not writing all her material herself, it's not her level of talent that's in question here, it's her desire to communicate something to the public and what that public decides to do with it.

That and the fact that she's written (or performed) the most recognizable dance songs in the world. I mean, if you try to make a list of the twenty best dance songs ever (or at least, most recognizable), at least half could be Madonna songs. With a group like Depeche Mode for instance, you know everyone is going to rock out the hardest to "Personal Jesus" or "Enjoy The Silence," but with Madonna, "Hung Up" gets just as much response as "Ray of Light," as "Vogue," as "Into The Groove," and note that each of those are credited to Madonna. She's like the Beatles in that respect, where so many songs that are loved all over the world and in every different language* come from the same people. You can blame really great PR all you want, but if the performer doesn't have anything to say, people are going to stop listening. I mean, really, who let the dogs out?

But again, for all the billions of people on this planet, and for each of us that are insanely talented, those of us who could probably run circles around Madonna, why does everything we know about dance music come from one person? I've got to believe that it's more than sheer luck or PR, but that she's some kind of physical manifestation of our collective desires to take a holiday and remember that everything is a-okay. (At this point, clearly the pot + Madonna combo has sent me into a Kabalistic trance.) We wouldn't be continually drawn to her if she wasn't tapping into something that we can all relate to. She's trying to remind us that there's no reason to be angry or upset, that we don't need to be mean to each other, that we really can "take some time to celebrate,"  and enjoy life to the nth degree. Even if you forget that the second you walk out of the arena, for a couple hours, you're there, you're a part of it, you're letting your little Madonna light to shine, and that's what it's all about.

Syd Barrett Has Left The Building

Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett
Founder of Pink Floyd
1946 - 2006

My brain is fracturing trying to capture just the right words to say about Syd. Where do you even begin? At what chapter in this multi-volumed collection of the thoughts and emotions I have wrapped up around this guy would you start at to try to unwind what this guy means to me? I want to talk about how he started Pink Floyd. I want to talk about how I felt the first time I heard his music. I want to talk about how Interstellar Overdrive is one of the greatest gifts to ever be given to music. I want to talk about being teary eyed when I saw his old friend, David Gilmour, sing one of his songs at a small theater in Oakland. I want to talk about why drugs are such an integral part of this story, but why it’s not actually about drugs at all. I want to talk about how the world needs people like him to remind us that peace is in the music. I want to avoid the rock casualty clichés. I want to express everything he’s ever made me feel. But there is just so much, all at once, there’s no better way to do it, than to pick up a copy of Piper At The Gates of Dawn, put on some head phones, and feel his light shining through the universe.

Thank you Syd, for making it all happen. Your lead role wasn’t in a cage, it was in our hearts.

Here is Syd's vision of Pink Floyd, smiling, having fun: