My Best Pot Stories

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 Places That Scare Me

“Well, see, there, you forgot to enter your vehicle information.”

By default, I tend to find myself doing silly or strange things to try to impress good looking men- “Sure we can listen to the Dave Mathews Band.” This of course is highly ridiculous behavior, as it only causes me to look completely clueless and uncomfortably weird in an otherwise calm situation. “Show them your BOOBS!” I heard a group of girls giggle-out, trying to single out one of their sororitron brethren to a group of tattooed-military-nipple-shirts smelling like a bottle's worth of Old Spice XXXTreme.

So when “forgot to enter your vehicle info” park ranger handed back my registration card with pen, complete with bulging shoulders and sparkling green eyes- as much as I wish I could have nervously shown him how incomprehensibly stupid I was for forgetting to mark down the license place number plus make and model of my vehicle at the drive-up registration kiosk of his camp ground near Monterey, California... I recognized that I was, instead, going to have to take him down a couple of pegs.

You see, mister tall-dark-and luscious, notice how my brow is all a'sweat, and this huge back pack is strapped to my back like an elephant? And that I'm standing in front of your drive-up kiosk, and not in some kind of futuristic invisible transportation machine? Well, the truth of the matter is, I walked here.

I wrote “n/a” over the appropriate fields, and returned the card.

He looked the card over again, puffing his chest out. Undershirt, fruit-of-the-loom v-neck.

He flipped out with an exasperated exhale, “You walked here from BERKELEY?”

Smart to have checked the address I wrote down, sure, but again, it seemed perhaps the ranger had been kicked in the head by a horse once or twice in his time.

“No, from the bus station, about a mile from here.”

“Oh I see, well, we don't get many walkers around here. Just put your receipt out on the number marker of your camp site so we know you registered.”

When I got to my camp site, I understood why he said they don't get many walkers; RVs and redwoods dotted the cliff line, no tents.

It would be imagination to say I didn't know I was sticking my finger in the socket by diving off into these journeys. Since about November of last year, I have been on tour of sorts- a musician, wandering about California, getting from here to there, playing music, writing music, meeting people, smoking a lot of weed, getting drunk sometimes, getting crazy a lot of the times, and visiting all the places that scare me.

Cumming a lot, basically. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the video-biopic Pumping Iron, “I am cumming all the time.” (If the internet proves of any value in our human history, it is that you can literally type in a search for “Arnold coming” and see the very clip right now. The search engine will probably even finish spelling it for you.)

So when I said my next destination was Oceanside, people's faces began to drop. It didn't take anybody long to figure out what attracted me to Oceanside: the Marines. It is where they go to get drunk and stupid while in San Diego, and I was there for a week.

It's like jumping into the pool of balls at Chuckee Cheese- gay kid in a rainbow candy store.

It fooled no-one that I might be there just to explore different parts of San Diego. I needed a place to get a legitimate flattop, and what better place to do that in, than a beach town where I can stick my finger in 20,000 volts every second.

It jump-starts the heart. It gets the body moving. It tells you you're alive.

It brings you up to the borderline, and asks you if you are ready to jump.

I don't believe that any of us are born without the innermost desire to do just that- do what takes us to the brink, and try to go a little more.

The “how” in that, the window dressing that makes up our stories, is little more than an arbitrary place-holder. The pursuit of window dressing, however, it has fractured off our human existence into believing that there are borders between people and matters of difference worthy of violence or intolerance. If growth is being able to incorporate previously unknown aspects of nature into one's self, then a constant turning away from fear, or the unknown, is akin to stunting one's own growth. Believing that there are borders, either physical or mental, is just another way of saying, “I'm afraid I don't know how to incorporate that yet, so it must be labeled as different.” Fear then is a motivating factor.

Like a cherub with my arrow, puncturing the “how” and getting to the meat of the matter, the secret heart of what drives all of this, I perused Oceanside with my head exploding, nearly unable to keep my eyes from popping out of my head.

“Well, that's idotic.”- My father.

“If I had a more sensible approach, obviously that's what I'd be doing.”
Amanda Palmer- The Dresden Dolls, “Gravity”

People began to question whether I had any sense when hearing my Oceanside plans – to their credit, out of concern, for which I am of course extremely grateful.

But I like the excuse: if I had a more sensible approach, I'd be using it. Life, like art and beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So the way we always contort ourselves to fit what we believe are the expectations of others, is rather humorous, even when, and perhaps especially when I find myself gel-haired and cologned like some a-hole in a magazine. In some ways, artists are nothing but contortionists. And going to Oceanside was a contortion of biblical proportions- epic floods.

Trapped. Stepping off the train, no real place to go, but too much to carry too far, I realized I had made it, but hadn't at all thought through the ramifications of the train pulling away from the station, and having only my two feet to guide me the right way, and my eyes to push me into a zone of racing heart and pinching stomach.

A recollection, a photograph. The setting, outside, San Diego most likely. Still a baby. Naked. Without any explanation, muscle-chested military-shorts-clad studs surround my body. No faces in the shot, there is no reference to who they are. Or why I am there, naked.

In my dreams, or perhaps my fantasies, they were my secret keepers, keeping their influence even secret to me. Vulnerable, they held me, protected me, circumcised me, fed me and raised me, all from under the cloak of their spell. Attached to them like an infant, still unable to let them go, they beacon and I am compelled to follow. The smells and the tastes entrance me, though they leave me bound and gagged. Identities unknown, just a force, encompassing chemical reactions to desire, and growth. And still, they send me out into the world, naked, exposed, unable to help myself, carried along at their command.

I know I can't reach out for them. I have to recognize them when they come to me.

“You smoke pot?”

Back in the wild beach woods of Northern California, I stumbled upon a raggedy looking fellow pushing a bike up hill. Leathery brown skin, dressed in combat-black, nearly head to toe.

“I'm going down the coast on bike. Got some killer bud with me.”

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.

You Can't Stop The Truth From Leaking

My service as a rock and roll journalist was met, as with most things, technical difficulties, and a few items got lost through the cracks. Upon doing some spring cleaning this autumn, I found a couple gems from last year worth sharing.

Here are reviews of The Dresden Dolls Live at the Roundhouse DVD, and the Rentals live at the Great American Music Hall, August 1, 2007.

==

Dresden Dolls Live at the Roundhouse DVD

One rainy April night in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, where I was housesitting for a friend who was kind enough to leave porn in the VCR, a dear friend named Jason came to visit for the night armed with a bag of goodies stocked to the brim with pot, scary movies, chips and CDs. One of the first things he said to me upon walking through the door was "Oh my god, the Dresden Dolls' first CD finally came out today. We have to listen to it." He'd talked to me about them a couple times, a local duo known for their "punk cabaret" scene of which Jason was fan numero uno. I vaguely recalled seeing them opening for the B-52's at a high school in one of South-Eastern Massachusetts grimiest cities, Brockton, about a year earlier. I was too distracted trying to mentally digest the idea of seeing the B-52's at a high school in Brockton to really even notice Amanda Palmer (the duo's piano maiden) was female until the end when I moved away from the speakers blocking my view.

"Sure thing. Let's spark it up."

And so we did. We smoked pot and listened to The Dresden Dolls self-titled debut on repeat all night long.

Now, I'm easily frightened off by high concept rock production, any hint of Broadway, and association with the word "goth." The Dresden Dolls have qualities that inhabit all of that. Combined with the fact that the B-52s picked them up to play at a high school made the record a hard sell. Perhaps it was around the fifth or sixth spin of the record (which may have also included an interruption or two for their live record, A Is For Accident, released simultaneously), that somehow the music took me out of my body and into the sound waves filling the room. Maybe the billowing bong that flowed between Jason and I had something to do with that as well.

Regardless, I was lost in the forest of Brian Viglione's mercilessly twisted and precise drumming punctured only by Amanda Palmer's raging rapids of vocal, piano, and theater which tell the tales of a person whose mantra is probably "dive when you're falling." Suddenly the repressed memories from the year before of a mime-faced Amanda straddling her rose-covered piano, and a shirtless already-sex-symbol Viglione hitting the drums so hard the strikes would propel him out of his seat, violently closing their set with a castrating number about a hermaphrodite victimized by a botched corrective surgery, "Half Jack," done with "Bohemian Rhapsody" execution.

And I was hooked.

The next morning, I peeled myself off the couch, wiped the Lays grease off my hands, and stumbled on to work, which involved a bus and two subways. Considering myself lucky to get a seat on the bus in the early morning commute, I looked up over my shoulder to find a beautiful Latino boy standing right next to my seat, crushed in between some unhappy bussers, but content inside the world of his headphones and radiating a special smile.

I could start to overhear the music he was so entranced by.

...before they had these pills to take it back
I'm half Jill
and half Jack

Of all the things a random commute bus-boy could be listening to while smooshed up against me, it was the Dresden Dolls. Bam, back to the Viglione forest, and a high that lasted me through the day.

Allow me to quote Twin Peaks, David Lynch's seminal 90's murder-mystery series famous for the line "Who killed Laura Palmer," here for a second:

As Special Agent Dale Cooper once said, "When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention."

I've been paying attention ever since.

And as I've watched this band grow from big Boston band to big world-wide band, the thing that has kept me impressed beyond all the make up and hyper-sexual quips, is their dedication to the very act of creativity itself.

Their current DVD release, Live at the Roundhouse, highlights that very idea. It shows the Dolls deeply fostering the creativity that inspires them, with all sorts of performers, including a super-mammaried Margaret Cho, engaging the audience, engaging the band, engaging each other. The DVD, like the band itself, is a party of the strange, campy and indulgent, whose ultimate victory is happiness.

The thing that worried me upon first hearing the Dresden Dolls that first night was the idea that it might all be just a shtick; their unashamed tribute to cabaret, complete with stage make up and sexy moves. Lyrically, it's easy to see how Amanda Palmer's words could be the bible to 15 year old goth girls with low self esteem ("I'd like to do more than survive I'd like to rub it in your face," Good Day). But to dismiss them on image is to miss out on what one should be playing close attention to.

Already seven years into their gig, with two albums and a lot of touring under their belt, if it were just a gimmick, this DVD would show the band's age as a one trick pony dying from a lack of originality in the way that once you got over Marilyn Manson's "A Portrait of an American Family," his follow-up, "Anti-Christ Superstar" seemed like a meek publicity grabber.

But the way Amanda Palmer copulates with her keyboard, drenching the audience clamoring over the rails, suggests they're just at the tip of the iceberg. When a dance troupe emerges out of the middle of the audience to perform during one song, and other random singers come up on stage to sing some of the songs with the band, you get the sense they see their audience like islands, and the concert is a way to bring them all together to create a giant continent. The Dolls' ability to foster life on this continent is only just beginning to be recognized, and judging by how much back pulling work they've put into it this far, their efforts can only become more amazing and wonderful.

In one of the final numbers from the show, "Sing" off their current CD "Yes Virginia," Palmer makes the astute observation "After the show you can not sing wherever you want." In thinking of rock and roll careers as a type of bird cage; since we can't sing whenever we want, we have recordings of people singing that we can listen to whenever we want, like ordering a caged bird to sing a pretty song at your whim. Here the image of the Dresden's as "dolls" comes into view; dolls given a house to run about and play in, a stage, a record deal, PR, but a house, nonetheless. And while people are admiring the pretty trellises and detail in the woodwork, Palmer and Viglione will summon the listening to "pretend we're all gonna get bombed. So sing."

This is the perfection that the Dresden Dolls have captured. "Live at the Roundhouse" captures that and delivers it to your TV screen.

Next up, Amanda's solo record, "Who Killed Amanda Palmer?"

David Lynch is always right.

==

The Rentals
Great American Music Hall
San Francisco, August 1, 2007.

I don't ever again want to see a picture of a bloated Matt Sharp, stubbly, long hair, with a gun pointed to his head. That was the picture Matt posted on the website for his band, The Rentals, after their second release, the mostly "I'm a rock star living in Spain"-inspired Seven More Minutes, received nearly zero reception, and Madonna's label, Maverick, kind of lost interest.

That was 1997. And now in 2007, we are blessed to have the real return of the Rentals firmly upon us.

With his nerd glasses still planted on his nerd cropped face, the bouncy soul who gave Weezer that unforgettable falsetto voice and bass punch on their first two records (when most kids were busy learning Zeppelin and the Stones on their Christmas six-strings, I was tuning my bass to E-flat and learning "Only In Dreams"), Matt Sharp finally seems ready to unleash the power that is The Rentals. At the first stop on an American tour to celebrate the release of "The Last Little Life" EP, Matt and his band of Moog-ers smiled and danced San Francisco's Great American Music Hall into blissful ecstasy.

Sadly though, the lessons the long break between the end of grunge and the revived Rentals have taught us, is that, in the "real world," it's all about hype. When Sharp splintered off from Weezer to form The Rentals, Weezer was catching all sorts of mainstream attention for their "MTV Buzz Clips" like "Undone," "Buddy Holly," and the one that caught my eye for the bleach blond hacky-sack playin bassist, "Say It Ain't So." The news of an almost "all Moog" band became instant media buzz, and you couldn't help but find The Rentals all over 120 Minutes (MTV's long running "alternative" music show), pop culture magazines like Details, Rolling Stone and Spin, and indeed all over the radio. "Friend of P" was, without a doubt, the summer song of 1995. Today though, finding any person doesn't say "Friends of who?" is a rarity indeed. Judging by the number of tables brought in to fill the dance floor at the Great American Music hall, those numbers are dwindling still.

Between Weezer records, Matt found himself and his band on tour with Alanis Morisette, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blur. The latter proved to be a perfect match, highlighted by The Rentals adding the Blur song "Tracy Jacks" to their set, and Blur performing "Friends of P" with Matt on French TV. The Gary Numan inspired sounds on the record even created buzz about a "synth revival" and possibly inspired a Moog tribute record, The Moog Cookbook, which recreated alt-rock hits using only Moogs (including Weezer's "Buddy Holly").

After his split from Weezer, and delay after delay on Rentals record number two, a picture of a desperate Sharp emerged, and the one with the gun pointed to his head was the one that stuck with most of the fans patiently waiting for a sign of life. Reports that "he'd been spotted at a club, fat and depressed" only fueled speculation of his status, and even prompted websites like whereismattsharp.com to be created in hopes of showing some kind of support for the man whose brand of nerd-schlock still appealed to teenage-loners who never stopped rocking when everyone else did.

The beauty of Matt Sharp is that he's willing to show he can (or at least try to) overcome all of that without skipping a beat. Even though, by mere default of the fact there hasn't been any new Rentals material in ten years, most of the songs they played were culled from the band's repertoire of now-classics, Sharp set out to prove that beyond the hype, beyond the magazine covers and radio interviews, you have to be willing to touch people and coax them out of their shells to cultivate any sort of compassion for what matters in the world. Not worried about what the press might say, or what a not-capacity crowd might look like in a small club, from beat one of The Rentals performance, Matt was eager to say what matters most is that he believes in the music. The energy with which he sang each one of them could level houses, and clearly rubbed off onto all his bandmates who couldn't stop smiling the entire time they were on stage. Infectious was the key word. It had clearly worked for his bandmates, and worked for everyone soaked in sweat down on the floor.

By stark contrast, the night's second opening act, which seemed to be the main draw of everyone in the audience not yet sprouting facial hair, Copeland, relied heavily on image and cool to lure their audience into frenzied submission. Clearly, in today's high stress market, cool is what counts. "I've never heard of The Rentals before tonight. I'm surprised they're not opening," remarked one gal with a fake ID who hustled her way to the front to make dreamy eyes with the singer who couldn't stop making Thom Yorke/Coldplay moves. It was all very "My Space" packaged, and for those who were there for that, it seemed a perfect fit. Those who dared to stay on for the Matt pack were treated to something a little more auspicious.

If there's a general idea that a "Moog band" is a one-trick-pony, then Matt Sharp is ready to break out of that box. Clearly still heavily stylized by the Moog and vintage synths, the Rentals are one stop short of being on Phil Spector ground, with glorious harmonies set forth by a staggering array of beautiful women, perhaps the real "front men" of the band. With gleaming smiles and the myriad of instruments they pick up (swapping between Moogs, acoustic guitars, basses, and just their voices), they become the flowering buds of Matt Sharp's rare orchid.

If this show was a hint of what Sharp and company are preparing for what every rock journalist is salivating to call the Return of the Return of the Rentals (in reference to the ironic title of their 1995 debut, The Return of The Rentals), then all the power of the music that Sharp finds so endearing will surely transcend anyone who doesn't mind being a lonely nerd and get them to dance like no one is watching.

Quantum Cracks

As a stoner, I have probably smoked more unnecessary dust, leaves, pubic hairs and tiny pieces of carpet fabric as a result of crawling around on the floor trying to pick up one's stash after opening the bag the wrong end up, or tipping over the open jar from rolling around on the bed too much.

As a San Franciscan (urbanite, not monk), I have seen more crack heads crouched down on the ground literally fingering the cracks of the sidewalks... for crack. I'd imagine they've smoked a lot worse things than excessive pubic hairs with such habits.

My dear friend Christopia and I once spent a stoned hour looking around my room for a suitable photo of me so he could take a picture of it on his cell phone so he could use it as my caller-ID pic. It never dawned on us that I was right there and he could just snap a picture of the real life RD.

While busking in downtown San Francisco, a cracked out sunbeam became my biggest fan, and started doing the “I just smoked all my crack” dance, for which I turned on the “space effect” on my amp. He then took his shoes off, left them in front of me, and walked into a pay-for-potty stall on the sidewalk, and never walked out.

In March of 1997 in San Diego, the bodies of all members of the Heaven's Gate UFO-religion were found after everyone had taken an ample supply of phenobarbital and vodka. Their goal was to meet up with the spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet. In all the media reports, the focus was solely on the concept of “cult suicides.” No one bothered to ask, what if they made it? What if upon further inspection, we find a spaceship in the tail-lands of Hale-Bopp with a bunch of Marshal Applewhites having a grand old time?

The laws of physics which govern our minds and text books says that when a fellow by the name of Isaac Newton observed an apple falling from a tree, he realized all matter attracts matter, and by nature, it tries to get together. Yet that couldn't account for how the atoms that make up everything in our universe stay in orbit around each other, and don't come violently crashing into one another. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been working hard to figure out what laws are governing the atoms, and what they are discovering is that matter may not even be here at all.

My mom, an avid meditator, once told me about a meditation she had recently gone through, where she felt her entire body levitate, her limbs expanded like rubber bands, and every sensation in every part of her body became extremely amplified. She blissed out on the gorgeous colors and sounds for hours. I quickly went to my journals and found the account I wrote of my first stoner experience, in which I had described the exact same trip.

Syd Barrett was the flamboyant founding member of Pink Floyd, who was forced out of the band before they became “Pink Floyd,” the mega-stars, mostly due to his mental incapacitation. During the recording the band's epic masterpiece, Wish You Were Here, which in fact was in reference to the long departed Barrett, Barrett actually showed up at the studio completely unannounced. No one had seen him for years, and at first, people didn't recognize the balding chubby character that had wondered in. According to legend, he just kept getting up to go brush his teeth.

In the Syd Barrett-movie in my head, when he “burnt out,” somewhere on their first American tour, supporting Jimi Hendrix, he actually joined a different Pink Floyd, one that existed on the plains of his acid trips, and not a record label. In that plain, he continued to write, record and perform with the band. After their break-through hit, Bright Side of the Sun, they went to Abbey Road to work on Glad That We're Here. During the sessions, Barrett became extremely disoriented, having walked into the studios to find a slightly different band recording songs that sounded similar but completely different to what he thought they had been working on. Unable to resolve the mis-placed characters, he gets up to go brush his teeth, thinking the practical-joke will be over upon his return.

I was helping a disabled friend cross the street in downtown San Francisco. Now, if neither of your legs work very well, it's going to take longer than the fifteen allotted seconds to cross the road. But taxi drivers have somewhere to go. “Stop j-walking, asshole!” yells one cab driver the second his light turns green, and we're still in the middle of getting across, my friend Jon hunched over, wabbly legged, clearly giving it his all to even have climbed down the three flights of stairs from his apartment. To complete the scene, the cabby wailed on the horn, and screeched around us.

“Oh, you learn to not take it personally after fifty nine years,” he shrugs.

I saw the Smashing Pumpkins do a two-week residency at the Fillmore last year. They performed all kinds of new songs that were written special for the gigs. One was called, “I'm Doing The Best I Can.” In it, Billy Corgan sings “I'm doing the best I can, so FUCK OFF.”

My favorite moment in stoner-ville, is the moment when you inevitably have to ask, “Where the hell did I park the car?” This is especially cumbersome in any environment where it snows a lot, leading to many stories of “false stolen car reports” by my friends. Once the thaw comes, which could be anywhere from a day to a month later, they eventually see the car and realize, “oh, THAT'S where I parked!”

One day, we'll all leave our Nike's at the altar, and get in the pay-for-potty, and rocket out of here to sights unknown, at speeds faster than 299,792,458 metres per second.

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.

Yes, We Have No Muffins For You

“You know what would be amazing right now?”

Engaging in Fantasy-Land is what housekeepers did to keep themselves from going stir-crazy in the northern tundra of Denali, Alaska during the tourist season. Elizabeth had been snacking on TGIFriday's Potato Skins out of the vending machine all summer.

“Mudslides from TGIFriday's.”

“I'd been thinking the exact same thing.”

I forget which one of us concocted the thought, as by this point in the summer all the seasonal employees were in such a state of delusion, having fended off mosquito rages, moldy employee wall tents, and well, every other unfathomable thing in the world happening, that concocting any kind idea from staging a world coup to having sex with a stranger just to sleep on their mattress seemed within the range of possible thoughts one might have.

“There's a Friday's in Anchorage.”

At this point, it's necessary to pull up a map of Alaska to get an idea of the radiance of the light about to go off in our heads. Denali is about smack in the middle of Alaska. Anchorage is at the southern coast. Alaska is just about as long north to south as the entire length of the lower-forty-eight.

By car, Denali is about a five hour drive back down to Anchorage. None of us seasonal employees arrived by car. We all took the train, the ticket for which easily cost one week's wages. And that was just a one way ticket. The shuttle easily cost one week's tips, and hitchhiking was free except for the fact that the likely hood of meeting a fate many times worse than a train or shuttle wreck increased exponentially when putting thumb to pavement.

So the bottom line was, we were stuck. All we could do was change sheets and dream of mudslides. Cool, delicious, sweet, chocolaty, creamy, alcoholic mudslides.

But they're only five hours away. Five hours. Anyone on the road going south from here is almost certainly going to Anchorage. If we hitched a ride to go down there, maybe we could take a shuttle back. We could definitely save enough in tips to afford a one way trip. Then we wouldn't have to stress about finding a ride back in time to clock in for work after our escapade.

All that for mudslides? It's kind of like cock-tease to leave Denali, and especially to treat yourself to something as decadent as a mudslide. You get to taste ecstasy for a little while, but you know you have to go back. You know that shuttle is going to pull out at a certain hour, and if you're not on it, all your possessions will be thrown out of your tent by the time you do get back.

And if our history has taught us anything, any well meaning trip to anywhere for the sake of adventure in Denali has met with unadulterated catastrophe. We'd be fooling ourselves to believe we could actually pull such a thing off. Even from the perspective of the managers, though our fellow housekeepers Sam and Val had proved themselves to be the most valuable housekeepers on staff, Elizabeth and I were the alpha housekeepers for some reason. If neither of us were there, it would be like a second grade class with no teacher. Eventually there would be a dirty linen fight until Jin Sun, housekeeper from Korea, would screech out “Don't scratch my heart!” Elizabeth's and my presence never stopped that, but we gave the illusion that it did, I guess.

But when the “not-I's” start hanging down on you, that's when the spirit of The Goonies kicks in.

“RD, there is no idea that's too far out for us. I made out with a biker chick. You almost got kidnapped by a guy on crack. We can do anything.”

And with that, we arranged to have our days off together and dreamed of glorious mudslides with nothing stopping us, riding the cherry down the mountain of whipped cream right into the bliss of a milkshake with booze.

Five rooms just checked out that need to be cleaned before lunch which is fifteen minutes and it's the one time they bought pizza rather than making us horrendous shit and if i don't get there on time there will not be any slices left?

Mudslides, RD, mudslides.

The manager Candy, yes, Candy, docked me “bonus pay” again on my time card even though I clocked in well before my shift, and didn't clock out until after it was over, because she is a dr unk? Again?

Mudslides, mudslides.

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.

To Find Just the Right Ganja Treats

“You know what my favorite smell in the whole world is?”

Billy was one of my tent mates in Alaska during the summer of '04. He was the dishwasher at the hotel restaurant, and his childhood best friend Sam was a housekeeper with me. The three of us shared a dark moldy wall tent, which also housed various cast-aways (read: people who got fired or kicked out of their tents by pukers or pissers) in the space abandoned by a meth-rattled redneck cook who was kind enough to leave us a hammock and the flashlight he fashioned into a resin pipe. Quite the Alaskan ingenuity.

“No, what?”

“The smell of hot butter colliding with Ganja!” he says while getting ready to chomp down on a bright green rice crispy treat half the size of his face.

With the smile of a Cheshire cat, he began to ingest his pot soaked buttery snack. But with the amount of pot we had already smoked that day, it seemed strange that one could possibly get any more stoned.

“Where did you get that?”

I had to have one.

“There's a girl over there,” and he pointed to a collection of trucks and RVs off in the distance, “with a long flowy dress and long hair. But you have to go through Hell to get there.”

Somehow, hope against hope, we had made it to August, the final stretch of our three month self imposed imprisonment in Denali, Alaska, working for the Crow's Nest lodge and restaurant. Many of us had fled,been fired or flogged, and only the heartiest remained. As a special reward, many of us thumbed a lift two hours south to Talkeetna, where the annual weekend-long Bluegrass Festival marked the end of the summer, and the arrival of darkness for the first time all season.

I hated hitch hiking.

It was a fun adventure, because you never knew what you were going to get, but you also never knew what you were going to get. So the prospect of passing on the festival to ensure not having to yet again get picked up by a psycho, pervert or fiend seemed totally fine to me. Even though Billy assured me we could hitch as a team with his girlfriend, I was also in the auspicious position of having to leave the festival early in order to be able to clock in back at work within a few days, which is what got me into trouble during the infamous crack-ride story.

But I didn't run this far to sit back for the finale, and when else in my life will I be in proximity to a place called Talkeetna where once a year they have a Bluegrass festival that attracts visitors from all over the world? Until now I'd never heard of Talkeetna, and never before taken an interest in Bluegrass music, so, why not?

But that's just the thing, the festival attracts all the local seasonal workers who could get the day off, and a handful of old school fringe hippies. So within fifteen minutes of holding Billy's colorful TALKEETNA sign, a yellow truck we had seen in the neighborhood throughout the summer pulled over and the couple inside got out and started making room in the bed of the pick up.

This was my reward for having endured so many long trips with total head cases. The two worked at one of the lodges too, and they had either purchased the truck for cheap, or managed to borrow one for the weekend. Either way, were down for two hours of wind in our hair and Alaska as the backdrop.

The ride to Talkeetna included several pulls off the road to pull off the peace pipe for a while, and take some moments to soak in the entirety of Alaska draped around us.

And I'd take moments to take in the entirety of the driver;

the way he'd lean against the old yellow pick up, the Marlon Brando-issue wife beater perked out at the nipples, a real nerd-rocker complete with dark rimmed glasses with his cute smiley girlfriend with pig tales and a charming disposition. I would stand there fantasizing of watching their love making videos, their bodies like landscapes, mountains, valleys, thunderous eruptions, movement, evolution, unity, separation.

“Come on, I'll take you there.”

Billy realized he had just described every girl at the entire festival, and they probably all had ganja treats for sale, but I wanted the one he had, the one that oozed with primordial green goo, saturating all the rice crispies in between.

And so began our long journey into hell to find just the right ganja treats.

The way the festival was set up, there was a camping area and then there was the festival area. Between the two was one long dirt road on which resided a twenty-four hour tailgate party. Lined on both sides with monster trucks, RVs, campers and what not, giant groups of partiers would merge with other groups, everyone drunk or otherwise inebriated, everyone trying to dance, everyone trying to get to the festival, everyone freaking out on LSD trips, and oh yeah, even in Alaska, August is hot, so it's 80 degrees and it's approaching ten at night.

In other words, it's hell.

When you start, you can't see how long it goes for, where your friends have suddenly gone, or even which direction your supposed to be going, and there's no real guarantee you won't get kidnapped by a gang of Alaskan separatists in bandannas and grizzly pelts.

But where there's a hell, there's a heaven. The desolate tundra of Alaska has a tendency to attract hot white trash men with too much testosterone, no shirts, low cut jeans, muscular everything, tattoos, and absolutely zero sense.

So walking through a jungle of them falling over each other is hardly a death sentence, except in the extreme fact that you know if any of them caught on for even a second that your attempt to get by them by smearing your body all over theirs had more than an “I'm just a bro trying to get around another bro, yo” tinge to it, you'd be impaled on a flag pole and waved around as an example to all other considering perverts.

And just like Billy described, we had finally found her amidst the tall trees of the redneck wonderland, long hair and dress flowing as she spun around in circles, her colorful beads like prayer flags spreading prayers of color into the wind. And like an ambassador of mother nature, a basket of bright green sweets was nestled under her bosom.

Billy made the introductions, and she tried to make the transaction.

They're five bucks each, or two for eight.

Or three for... six.

Stoner math seemed to dupe both of us for a second, but she just seemed happy to be spreading her warmth no matter what. “Just be careful,” she warned. “Try half first, then wait a while.” Ingesting THC with food usually comes with a warning. There's no real way to gage how much you're ingesting, and because it has to seep into your blood system through your stomach, rather than into your brain through your lungs, it takes a lot longer to feel the effects, and by the time you realize you've had too much, you probably ate the rest anyway, resulting in the feeling of being hit by a mac truck for the rest of the day.

Bat Juice

A hallmark of any family get together in my Peruvian family is when my tiny uncle Guillermo, who stands maybe 5'1”, with heels on, waddles by, unable to speak much English, but able to offer “Coors...eeeeh... Miller... eeeeeh... Germany?” Then his son, my cousin, a refrigerator of a man stomps by, making his only cameo appearance of the night to say “It's Heineken, Dad. We're doin shots on the deck, so if you want some... I'm just coming through to get limes.” He's the kind of guy that can eat a burrito bigger than your head in less than five minutes. That's the portrait of family get togethers for me.

Through a series of miraculous events which finds me wedded to a corn-bread mid-western mister, I spend most holiday seasons in Dayton, Ohio opening presents with the original Puritan Pilgrims. Now, I could take pot-shots at Ohio, but I usually have a fantastic time, the scenery is great, I completely adore the family, and it would be too easy to mention the fifty-foot Jesus doing a permanent touch-down by the side of the freeway.

When it comes to booze, Ohio is like everywhere else, in that there are bars, people drink, and there are inevitable problems with punky youngsters not knowing their limits and crotchety oldsters tipping over in their lawn mowers. But the “mid-west” is also home to more conservative values, which can include strict views on alcohol. In the sweetheart's family, when the adults are around, the prevailing idea is “Alcohol? Well sometimes we like to have champaign on New Years! But, no.”

So imagine my delight, as a member of the euphoric-inebriated class, to discover that any trips to see the family would probably include no members of the spacial-disorientation family.

See, as far as alcohol goes for me, I'm not too much a fan. My dad's drinking when I was a kid just kind of turned me off to it, and when given the option of smoking pot instead, well, what it comes down to is that marijuana is of the gods, and alcohol is of fermentation. But to allow for social norms and airplane security, in a pinch, alcohol can provide the right “volume control” as to relieve the knots in the stomach and be able to eat properly, laugh and tell stories, and not want to just run and hide.

Ben's not blind to this fact, nor does he dis-allow me from actually drinking when the time arises, or even finding a person to buy pot from while we're there if I were that determined. But there's a subtle shyness about it that comes over Ben whenever the subject comes up. It's a squeamishness that might be associated with the idea of having sex in your own parents' bed. There's a certain puritanical sense about the mid-west, which Ben's family reflects to some degree, and when we're there, Ben reflects it too, like he's seven again; which is, you know, sickeningly cute and gorgeous. There's just something that doesn't quite want you to break that innocence. I fear any pot smoking would be met with paranoid delusions of being chased by Mennonites.

So, when the chances to drink arise while on holiday, I take them. If I'm not going to be entering the realms of the unreal, I might as well enter the realms of the stumbling, which is merely a translational codex for the realms of the Christmas-letter-updates.

This has gotten me into trouble. In what has already been dubbed (in all caps), “THE THANKSGIVING OUTBURST OF '07,” I actually spoke up for once and was clearly on the verge of having a highly emotional moment in front of Ben and all his old high school friends. And I'm sure the half-drank TGIFriday's Ultimate Mudslide looked fabulous in front of me as I fought back the tears, with those swirls of chocolate syrup streaked down the glass in a spiral.

It wasn't quite an Anderson Cooper with ear piece falling out and ribbons of text soaring by and update boxes popping up so fast you can't understand a single thing that's happening but you know it must be fantastic so you keep watching, type event exactly. It was just that I needed some clarification and reassurance on the value judgments people make, and to make my point, I found it necessary to bring up some semi-private and clearly closely felt feelings that caused a quiver or two in the voice. Oh geeze, I basically said I was afraid people thought I was a lame duck and they put up with me because Ben liked me enough. Talk about a skinny white boy whine fest.

It wasn't bloody, no one got hurt, and no one did anything they later regretted.

The brainfreeze from the mudslide hadn't even fully thawed by the time we ended up at one Aunt and Uncle's house for Thanksgiving dinner down past the highway with the five-hundred foot rock-and-roll Jesus. The Uncle of the Aunt-and-Uncle duo is either like this to all new-comers, or honed in on the baby-deer-in-the-way-of-a-mac-truck look in my eyes, and came up behind me and whispered, “There's egg-nog in the fridge behind the milk....”

“...and bat juice above the stove.”

Bingo.

I knew exactly what he was talking about. I finally exhaled after having been there for twenty minutes. The bat is the little logo on the Bacardi bottles. He was telling me if I wanted to spike my eggnog, which is the only reason he offered it, where I could find it. So I finished up whatever conversation I was in, “Uh-huh-uh-huh, college, great, yeah, okay,” and made a bee-line to the kitchen.

Sometimes Life Just Hands Itself To You

The first warm and sunny day in Boston after an unimaginatively long winter was also one of my last before jetting off to Alaska for the summer, prompting my best gay friend Christopia to call me up saying he was going to come over and take me out for a smoke drive.

First, you have to understand Christopia. Think football jock on ecstasy starring in the Wizard of Oz. His imposing presence might intimidate you if it wasn't for the fact he wears pink polo shirts with the collar up and never misses an opportunity to tell you how sassy he is. I mean, his name is Christopia, 'nuff said.

Oh, except for the fact he was off again/on again dating Prince Charming at the time. No, literally Prince Charming. From Disney on Ice.

He clicked his size fourteens together three times, and showed up at my front steps driving his nineteen-eighty-and-something maroon Ford Escort, which he had decked out in rainbow boas, a dashboard hula girl, all things sparkly, and a lot of pot. This would turn out to be an excellent day.

As we snaked our way through surface streets to the Massachusetts coast line, we took turns with Bombardier, Christopia’s glass pipe named after a beetle that shoots fire out of its ass. Somewhere between flipping through radio stations, sharing and laughing at recent stories involving our latest craigslist hook-ups, and eyeballing every Dunkin’ Donuts we passed, we came upon the greatest site we’d ever seen, the moment in the movie where it changes from black and white into color… a whole troop of shirtless army men cleaning the street.

To crown the moment, like munchkins coming out to sing and dance, The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” came on the radio, and we coasted through the intersection in super slow motion using every part of our being to take it all in. I think Christopia and I both mentally embraced each other and cried a little for the beauty that lay before us. “Oh yeah, you really got me now.”

There were 7 or 8 of them, all in their army issue shorts, with trash bags, mops, brooms, brushes in hand, working hard for their community. I swear my eyes divided up so I could take each one in individually and simultaneously. The one on his knees planting new greenery along the sidewalk, the sun glistening off his sweaty back, the one with the broom in the middle of the intersection stopping to pose for a second and rub his tired biceps. Of course when you’re high, they’re not just doing a civil service on a sunny day… oh no, they’re performing for us, and us alone. They’ve reached into our psyche, taken hold of our innermost desires, and recreated them for us… right in the middle of this intersection. Add in the pounding screams of The Kinks and every pleasure sensor in the body reaches that state that you can only hope to feel if there is heaven and you end up at its front gates.

Bac-RD

Wait.

How do I get home again?

I keep digging into my pockets, trying to pull out the map of Barcelona, but all I can find are condoms...or condomi as the little silver and red packets say...condoms passed to me by the beautiful Argentine man decked out in a fantasy red-white-and blue tennis outfit.

Mr. Argentina was the concierge at the bathhouse, appropriately named “Buenos Aires”...where Mr. Argentina emptied his bottle of Bacardi on me, which is precisely why I can't find my way home now...not home...but my Peruvian aunt's home here in Barcelona...and all I have are these condoms.

And a slide.

There's a children's park across the street, and I haven't been on a slide since going to school no longer meant having recess. It's three in the morning so I don't think any little kids will mind if I cram my long drunken body onto their slide.

My legs are more than half the length of the slide. There won't be any death-defying adrenaline rush from this ride. But when you were just treated to the sights of the best of Spain-and-Finland's masculinity sharing a tender moment together in the darkest recesses of a bathhouse, somehow, a ride on a kiddie slide seems next on the menu. As does more Bacardi.

For my next nostalgia trip...the swing set. This reminds me of my honeymoon. Somewhere en route between Arcadia, Oregon, and San Francisco, Ben and I stopped along the Oregon coast to take in the sights of surf, sand, and sandy surfers. There was also a swing set which provided many smiles and laughs for my sweetheart and myself.

Jet Fighter Helmet

“Do you think he's ready to try a bong?”

“Oh shit. RD with a bong? It's all over now. Let's do it.”

Those were my two neighbors conspiring against me, Jamie and Dustin. All three of us were the same age, and had basically grown up together along side an avocado orchard in the east county of San Diego.

Jamie and I were closest. She was a dreamer like me, and we indulged eachother's fantasies about being rock stars gallivanting throughout the universe, saving the rain forest and the hungry with our pop music. Then we'd switch gears and go into the tree house to play “Fighting Couple,” a game where we used our middle names and pretended to be an adult couple going through relational troubles, complete with flying dishes and scribbles of “I HATE RENE” on the tree-house walls.

Though real fighting couples separated us for a good chunk of our adolescence, she had returned from living with her mom in Delaware to be with me in the summer of 1995. We were sixteen, and Jamie and I knew we'd spend the entire summer together getting stoned out of our minds.

My relationship with Dustin, on the other hand, had been a rocky one from the beginning. His parents were over zealously Christian, which put a strain on our friendship, being my mom was an up-and-coming Buddhist still smarting from the pains of growing up Catholic in South America. Neighborly dinners when we were kids would run amok when Dustin's mom would start speaking in tongues and his older sister would start telling me I was going to hell unless I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior. All I knew about Jesus at the time was that Madonna wore a ton of crosses and I just wanted to be Madonna.

The fun thing about boys the same age growing up together is when they simultaneously discover that penises are an amazing play tool; the game of “Doctor” suddenly opens a whole new world of possibilities to curious budding children. But with a mom as suspicious as mine, and a mom as Christian as Dustin's, our “secret” was inevitably discovered, and wrath was what we had to pay.

The two moms convened to discuss what to do about their little bundles of joy, and I was too embarrassed to even want to overhear anything they might have said. I had a jet-fighter helmet that was a gift from a Navy Seal I had a pre-pubescent crush on, so I put that over my head which blocked out all sound completely. The helmet also had a microphone piece attached which I pretended was my stage headset-mic. I sang “Live To Tell” into it and fell asleep.

After that, we'd see each other occasionally, but were mostly in different schools and just drifted apart. By the time we were 15, crystal-meth was starting its chokehold among East County's youth, and Dustin was the first on our block to get addicted.

So it was quite a surprise for the three of us to find ourselves together in the summer of 1995, mid-teens, totally freaked out by the world, and about to watch it all blow up, or melt down, or spin out. I was in the process of coming out, Dustin was in the throws of Crystal and doing any drug passed in his direction, and Jamie was lost in a world of promiscuous sex and low self esteem.

“Do you want to try the bong, RD?”

Jamie was a seasoned stoner, having the kind of parents and step-parents that wouldn't mind passing her the joint on Friday nights at home. I, on the other hand, had only been smoking since February, and was still in the stage of giggles beyond giggles. We were ripe for the picking, and the pot gods were not going to let us rot.

Under the secrecy of night, the three of us sat in my parent's driveway, propped up on the ice plant that lined the embankment. In the dark of the shadows we all giggled at each other wondering how we'd all gotten so far from each other, and wondering how we'd ended up back together; still the same but completely different. And now we're all going to get stoned together.

The great thing about trying new ways to smoke pot with your friends is that they take special pride and happiness in being the one who gets to hold the lighter while you start sucking in air, take the bowl piece out when you've sucked in enough, and remind you to “Hold it in.”

Waiting to exhale, I leaned back into the prickly softness of the ice plant. Its mushy water-rich spines provided a soft cushion for my body to surrender into. I felt the little ice plant tentacles tickling my body, and turning into fingers and hands, massaging me. I was drifting.

“Hey, do you think he's okay?”

“RD, you alright there?”

“Oh shit...” and I think that's about the last thing I was physically able to say before turning into an out of control giggle volcano.

Me and the ice plant floated across several worlds together while Jamie and Dustin passed the bong back and forth reminiscing about playing in “Jamie's Jungle,” an avocado tree with perfectly draping branches perfect for being hidden and hanging out in. We'd bring our boom boxes and blast the “Welcome To The Jungle” cassingle.

“What are you laughing at?” Jamie and I had retired to the tent we set up in my folk's back yard.

I really wanted to tell Jamie what it was I was laughing at, but every time I tried to tell her, I just started laughing even harder. And the more I would laugh, the more she would ask. And the more she would ask, the more I would laugh. We had a tape recorder on, and the only thing on it is “What are you laughing at?” followed by fits of laughter from the both of us.

My young mind was blown away by the way her face kept morphing right in front of my eyes. For a part of the time, she was Tori Spelling, and then Claire Danes. She may have turned into an inanimate object a few times, like a large ice cream sundae. But either way, the entire night was a series of psychedelic trips which included lighting up our cheeks with flash lights and eating croissants; the only “snack” I could find in the house.

I had seen things that night I had only wished about in my dreams and fantasies. I felt connected to myself in a way I hadn't since childhood. There was something I was discovering, but the confusion of teenage-hood was such a staticy mess, I really couldn't make out what it was. It was like being with that huge jet helmet on, and singing into the mic, only this time, hearing something back. I just knew I had to be there and maybe, maybe one day I could be connected enough again to hear the message that was coming through. Luckily Jamie and I had all summer to keep dialing in, phoning home.

Completely Confused, Totally Wasted and In The Middle of Nowhere

I have no idea how I want to tell this story. Vacationing in Amsterdam for a week is like staring into the flash of a camera, and wondering how on earth you’re ever going to get your sight back. It’s moments like these that you realize nothing in life is predictable, and yet never surprising. Of course I would end up watching the sunrise sitting by a canal, coming down from some crazed pot induced night of debauchery. Of course I would find myself in a mushroom shaped coffee shop having conversations with a kitten and learning to enjoy Euro-techno. But where do I even begin to sort out this exploded water balloon of a week? What piece of this can I extract and turn into some kind of coherent tale? Well, perhaps that’s just it. There is no coherency to any of this, and when you let go of control, you end up falling asleep in a porno theater, and if you’re lucky, your pants are still on.

“Is your friend okay?” The waitress at Barney’s Breakfast Bar (server of Amsterdam’s award winning bud, Willie Nelson) gave me a look of “I see this all the time,” as she got an energy drink and some water for Rob, who was passed out face down on the counter. I met Rob an hour earlier at the Bulldog Hostel, which can only be described as Hotel Starbucks. Posterized images of random celebrities (Bono, Madonna, Richard Pryor) line the hallways, everything is clean and funky but a little homogenized, and their logo (who would guess, a cartoon bulldog) pops up all over the city.

On our walk over to Barney’s Breakfast Bar from the Bulldog, I began to realize Rob wasn’t a real person, he was a physical manifestation of my subconscious. My height, my age, but with glasses and ADD, he spoke as if he were reading the private, most idiosyncratic diaries of yours truly. I had only smoked a little bit of hash by this point in my journey, but already I was in a real life Mulholland Drive. His outer personality was a blueprint of my inner workings: excited and naïve, but still critical and jaded; all over the map, but still intensely focused; connecting experiences to draw exact pictures of a disappointing world that is ultimately one hilarious trip after another. My shy and quiet nature keeps all those inner workings hidden from the world until I figure out the best way to express them. Rob’s ADD erases that layer, and he comes forth as a raw and uninhibited version of me.

Once the Willie Nelson started to take hold of our bodies and minds, those layers that separated us began to merge, and dissolve into each other. By my second hit, I was in a place that I haven’t been to probably since I first started smoking ten years ago; a place where the physical world becomes just a platform to experience the universe and every color, every frequency and every thought that’s happening all at once. It’s that moment when the personality just turns off, and as if on queue, Rob passed out face down on the counter top. But that part of me that is afraid to expose what’s going on inside to the world outside kept me somewhat afloat, well, at least able to keep my head up and eyes open, and able to (sort of) talk to another American who came up to us to enjoy some Mr. Nelson.

His name was Ben, and it must have been the Willie, or the fact he had the same name as my fiancée, but I was finding myself completely entranced by his sexuality. Nothing about him particularly screamed “sexy;” short, furry, glasses, but his tight-ish t-shirt and frat-boy shorts begged further investigation. In my mind I already had him posing for polaroids for me, shirtless, hands behind head, lonesomely gazing down at his own six pack. But my feet were melting, and we were having completely separate conversations:

“How long have you been here?”

“Yeah, it’s my first time, it’s pretty great isn’t it?”

“Oh really? I thought about seeing the Rijks Museum too.”

“I don’t know how much bike rentals are. I’m sure they’re… those eggs look really good.”

The Second First Time

Until now, my mom had always thought that the time she and I smoked pot together was the first time I ever smoked pot. Sorry mom, but it was actually the second time. Being that moms know everything, especially my mom, she probably already knew, or at least strongly suspected. It was my mom’s omnipotence that brought us to smoking pot together in the first place.

As an extremely shy teenager, “I’m going to a party” was never a part of my vocabulary. My buddy Zach was having another one of his many football parties, which always included copious amounts of football jocks, booze and pot. Booze didn’t interest me at all, and while I wished the prospect of a room full of drunken jocks was titillating, at the time it meant instant panic attack. But if pot was involved, perhaps I could lock myself into his parent’s bedroom with a joint, and have my first pot experience watching the night’s belligerent activities through the safety of a key hole.

Picking up our week’s worth of groceries at the Food Basket, my mom wrestled differences between ketchup, catsup, and something called “Spread with Red,” while I began to butter her up about Zach in hopes she wouldn’t catch on to the fact I was trying to sneak my way into his party. “Yeah, Zach made varsity this year. He’s really good. Just might be the best player in school. I really should go see a game of his. I mean, I know I’m not into football, but it’d be great to show my support you know.”

“Uh-huh. The ketchup is seven cents an ounce, but the catsup is a dollar for a quart. I’m so confused.”

“And people go to his house afterwards to celebrate, so that’d be fun to check out too.”

“Uh-huh. I think you want to go to Zach’s party so you can smoke pot.”

Oh shit. Busted. Without any probing questions, she just knew, and pounced on it. She may as well have said “And don’t lie about it, because remember, I know everything!” because I was under her grips and forced to say nothing other than the truth. “Well, I’ve heard that it’s there. I really don’t want to drink though! Really! Not even curious about the taste of beer. At all!”

“Well, listen,” she started. In that split second of anticipation of whatever she might say next, I thought of every last possibility, which ranged from “No son of mine is going to become some drugged out loser like those friends of yours,” to “Well, I think you should wait until you’re 16 at least.”

But then the unthinkable happened.

“If you’re going to be smoking pot, your first experience should at least be in a safe place, with someone who cares about you, and in a controlled environment.”

Oh Allan

Sometimes, all you need to do is make someone smile.

I am a firm believer in the beauty of flirtation. Now, by flirtation, I don’t mean the boobs-in-your-face-crotch-grabbing type. I mean the you’ve-been-staring-at-me-and-I’m-flattered-here’s-a-smile variety, that is simple, subtle, and appreciative. Of course, it makes a person feel good about themselves to be admired from afar, but it makes the admirer feel even better about themselves when their stares are requited with a gesture of thanks. For those of you who are constantly the source of shy-boy gazes, you don’t even need to approach the guy, fain interest, or even gayness. Just a nod can make that person’s day. It’s as easy as that, just one nod, and voilà, a day has been made. Sew on your good-deed-badge, Scout, ‘cause you’re going to heaven! I mean really, what could be better than making someone feel good about themselves? I’ll tell you: being stoned and walking through the campus of UC Berkeley.

I think straight guys secretly love being admired by people like me. It must be some crazy ego stroke or something, because every time I show up on campus, it’s like the guys start in on this incredibly well choreographed dance. “RD’s coming! T-shirts off and hoses ready. I’ve got the soap and buckets!” Seriously, I’ll walk up the hills of campus and see an entire frat house out on the street washing trucks, getting soap suds all over each other, spraying each other’s board shorts, and deciding the only way to wash the hood is by laying on it with arms behind the head, pecks a-flexin’. I’ll turn the corner to find a group of jocks practicing their boxing moves and wrestling in the grass together. They sit on each other and hug each other and sweat and grunt and look up at me and smile. And I’m left unable to move, thinking only “There are beautiful shirtless men wrestling in front of me and they’re looking and smiling in my direction. The sun is shining, I’m in California, and I’m really high. Am I alive right now?”

So, when I first arrived in Berkeley, I sought out other buddies to chill and smoke pot with. This is how I met Lewis. Lewis was a cook at one of the frat houses on campus, and lived at the frat house… with all the frat boys. His room was the den of pot, so naturally, that’s where all the boys wanted to hang. Lucky for me, Lewis and I hung out a lot one summer, and boy did I always leave feeling very, very good about myself.

One night, during a particularly awesome Conan O’Brien show, a boy called Allan showed up for a session with Lewis and I. Oh, Allan. Nineteen years of all-American cornbread good looks in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. His puppy-dog eyes screamed “I’m on my own for the first time, and I’m in California!” He was all too eager to enjoy the pot hookah with Lewis and I, and Conan crowned the evening by uniting us all in laugh.

The First Time

I somehow knew it was meant to be. As if by instinct or some kind of genetic pre-disposition, I could feel my most basic animal logic kicking in; I was 15 and ready to get stoned. Somewhere in my gut I knew, even as a kid, that this green leafy substance and I would have a long and giggly relationship.

When we were exposed to those “anti-drug” films in 5^th-8^th grade, the guys with the big afros and glassy eyes always caught my attention. Usually wearing a colorful muumuu, and speaking of love and peace slowly and melodically, it was hard to believe that whatever these guys were on could actually be harmful.

On the other hand, the interviews with nose-bleeding trust fund kids and tweaked out street hustlers showed us that things like coke and speed weren’t really that fun. But they could never say anything bad about pot. How could you when your stock footage included not much more than dancing girls and guys saying “Groovy, man.” One film tried to scare us from pot by saying our acne would get worse from eating too much junk food, and that we might get laid a lot. Yeah, it really sucks when you’re a closeted 15 year old homosexual, to have the problem of getting laid too much.

The stage was set; I was already a Pink Floyd fan, my hair was down to my shoulders, and my maroon ten-eye Dr. Marten’s screamed “teenage-counter-culture.” I was also perfectly playing the part of the spacey intellectual; a smart honors student, but completely in my own giggly world. My appearance and personality type were there, I just needed the actual weed to fill in the gap and complete the picture. My friends patiently waited to see when I would finally take the plunge. I think my football-jock-buddy, Zach, gave himself a pat on the back when he realized he would be my first supplier.

I’ll never forget conjuring up the nerve to approach him about it. I practiced all night the night before to make sure I could get the words out of my mouth, and that I wouldn’t chicken out and say I meant to ask for “a pot” instead. “Yeah, my mom’s pots broke. All of them. And I need one. And  you’re the only person I could think of to ask. I swear this is not a thinly veiled attempt at something else.”

Despite his football jock status, and my nature to be immediately intimidated by such people, Zach was a very approachable, caring and gentle soul, who I knew I could trust. When the time came to ask him about it, he smiled a big smile just as I started in on “I was wondering if you might be able to get me…” Knowing what was coming next, he saved me the embarrassment of having to say the words, gave me a big hug and said, “No worries kid, I’ve got you covered.”

But my naiveté tripped me up at the first question, “how much do you want?” Uh, do I measure by putting my hand up and showing you a space between my thumb and index finger? Do I measure in joints? Is a pound enough? Clearly perplexed, he said “We’ll start you off with a nickel bag.” Cool, my first foray into pot lingo, “a nickel bag.”

I Miss Andrew Jacob

Claiming yourself as an "artist" and being in a rock band at the age of 24 gives you carte blanche to just dither around, make pancakes, smoke pot, and make some noise every now and then, all the while, blaming white corporate oppression for the fact that you can't hold a job, and fascist journalism pigs for keeping your EP sales low.

"My vision is too intense for the world to handle, but I'll never compromise," you say with bong smoke billowing out your mouth.

Such was the case with the Lakeside Project, my pet band during my Boston tenure. Destined for stardom, we decided to get serious about practice, and make it an all day affair as often as possible.

Starting early in the morning, we'd all gather up on Hooker St; home of drummer Andrew, the unassuming Jedi with a smile that made the room glow, and he'd promptly start making us chocolate chip pancakes like a good den mother.

With pancakes, milk and o.j. sitting in our stomachs like bricks, we'd be too deliriously full to actually play any music, so we'd spend endless hours tuning, untuning, and watching Stephen shake the reverb pedal saying "I think this is broken." Eventually Kent would start in on The Moldy Peaches covers to ease the painful food coma.

After all our bowels had moved, we'd finally have the wherewithal to rip through molten lava versions of one or two of our stadium rockers then call for a clearly earned break,  which, more often than not included raiding Andrew’s pot stash, watching MTV and making fun of The Strokes; a clear sign of confident musicians ready to cut it in the professional market.

“What the fuck is this shit? The Strokes?” Stephen’s pessimism for all things non-Lakeside Project was truly inspiring, though it only validated my and Kent’s raging jealously for all other bands. “Is it the White Stripes? They’re all the fucking same. The White Strokes?”

My Craig's List Missed Connections Ad

A story from the Placebo/She Wants Revenge show at the Warfield in San Francisco, October 24, 2006.

Every day is like a missed connection. Every moment presents an infinite possibility of choices, and we give up everything to choose the one. It's pretty amazing that we confine ourselves to these odd existences when all we truly long for is to be stoned and naked rolling around in the grass while the sun sets. In other words, to be enjoying life for all its worth.

We choose to pretend like we're not noticing the person crossing our paths on the street. Instead of saying, “Fancy a shag,” or “How do you do,” we look the opposite way and think to ourselves, “What does martinizing mean, anyway?”

Craigslist, like all wonderful things on the Internet, completely changes how we react to this. Now we can just log onto missed connections on Craigslist, and say “Hey, yo, to that broad that flashed me her tits from a limo on the Oakland Bay Bridge, I think we had a connection, so you know, email me.” This of course introduces a whole new layer of choices that can forever alter a person's fate; Do you post to Craigslist? How do you word it to catch the right person? How do you know they'll even think to check Missed Connections before your post gets buried under the thousands and THOUSANDS of Missed Connections that appear daily??? Nevertheless, the Internet provides a forum to peak out from behind our fear and wave to somebody out there.

So when I found out that Placebo was playing at the Warfield in San Francisco, I was presented with a whole myriad of choices; should I spend money on tickets (found on Craigslist, coincidentally!), pollute the air with gas and my head with traffic, or chance taking the long BART ride across the bay and hope I can leave the show before the trains stop running, all to see a band whose music I was only marginally interested in, have only ever had one album by, and haven't actively listened to for the last five years? Challenging prospect, I know.

In fact, in terms of my music snobbery, Placebo was a band with many marks against them. They've sold their songs to commercials; they haven't changed their sound or approach to music writing for their entire ten year career; most of their songs are a formula of very simple arena-rock ready riffs plus cheap lyrics about sex and drugs with predictably obnoxious rhyming schemes (“Day's dawning, skin's crawling,” from “Pure Morning”.).

That being the case, surprisingly, what stuck with me was the fact that they have indeed been doing this for ten years, and still approach it with the excitement and freshness of ten years ago, but with the patience and professionalism that comes with a decade honing your craft.

I was interested in Placebo initially because of their quasi-gay status, a seductive gender bending image and tunes that I actually enjoyed and could relate to. I was waiting to hear something to really transport me into their music, something that said, “We want to take this as far as possible.” It's what I heard in Radiohead the first time I heard “Planet Telex,” off The Bends. It proved to me they were not interested in being known as “that band who did 'Creep'.” By the time I heard the Placebo song “Black Eyed,” which boasts of being schizophrenic and “biting on your nuts,” I decided that I had heard enough of their witty, sexy, provocative numbers to realize, “Well, I do actually like all these songs,” and I picked up their 2000 effort, Black Market Music. I found a pleasantly moody semi-industrial rock record that had some pretty cool things going on in it. From the maybe Pink Floyd sample in “Taste In Men” (see “Let There Be More Light” from A Saucerful of Secrets), to lyrics about the sometimes horse tranquilizer/sometimes rave drug, Special K, Black Market Music consistently skirts the edge of greatness, but it never quiet goes beyond the clever lyric and tongue-in-cheek riff.

Most bands occupying this sphere of my mental space wouldn't get much of a second look if I found out they were touring in my area. But something compelled me to think twice when I saw the name PLACEBO printed in the paper.

When the lovechild of David Bowie and Trent Reznor took the stage, singer Brian Molko and his band showed that everything that I had thought about them didn't matter. This was their show, and they love what they're doing. They've been following their bliss for ten years, making the kind of music they want to make, and too bad if you have a problem with that, because we're having an awesome time with no intention of stopping. They're also really talented live performers, and didn't have to rely on their early radio hits to keep the crowd interested. Friend to many chubby 15 year old goth girls, and geeky guys with lisps getting over their D&D phase, Molko hugged each one of them with his fained guitar-hero prowess, and for that moment, no connections were missed.

That aside, there were several elements which made the whole event seem like something out of a Hollywood movie version of a rock club; the perfectly lit stage with bright strobing white lights, the band members all cutely dressed in thrift shop boutique black, striking all the right rock poses, and with the obligatory feedback arena rock jam to close out their biggest hit. Drummer Steve Hewitt had perfect 1987-era Bono/Michael Hutchence hair (long, dark and slightly curly) and ended the night with a drum stick toss. Even their back up band members looked like they could have easily been the back up band for Duran Duran, and probably have their own synth pop duo on the side called Invertigo that once played at a Paris Hilton CD release party.

The guitar tech looked like a rock version of Maxine from Being John Malkovich, and took her job very seriously. Constantly jittering about the stage, shuffling papers, straightening cables, tuning and re-tuning each guitar, standing directly behind Molko at the conclusion of each song with a new guitar ready to strap on him, she boldly held her own on stage with a look that said “see how my hair is in a ponytail, but it still keeps draping in front of my face? Yeah, this job is ha-ard, but I'm in control. CONTROL! That's my mantra. And yeah, I know this camisole is kind of girly, but it's all black, and check out these guns man, I'm gonna get a tattoo right here...after the tour...” and, swoosh, she'd swipe her hand in front of her face trying in vein to tuck her bangs behind her ears before triple checking the batteries in the e-bow.

Bassist Stefan Olsdal's stage poses were very L.A. in a way that suggested “I am a sex god, and I know you worship me. See how I hold my bass guitar a foot in front of me while a play an open E for three minutes? Yeah baby, I'm on fire.” Even though his exposed chest and searing gaze were somewhat titillating, watching him perform an interpretive dance for the first minute and a half of the song “Taste In Men,” I couldn't help but feel that if he performed any of his rock-god poses on me in bed, I'd instantly turn bright red and become unable to stop giggling. What was great about it though, was that Olsdal was completely in charge of his on-stage persona. He struck his poses unapologetically, and even if he couldn't win over the most jaded minds in the audience, he acted as if didn't need them to keep rocking. The fact that his pelvis extended closer to the audience than his bass guitar at times, and that his chest bore merely a vest and a glittering diamond necklace only served to elevate room's sexual tension.

It should come as no surprise that a room full of hot sweaty bodies all crunched together listening to really loud music is my idea of a good time. So here I am watching a 6”5', half-naked bassist do pelvic gyrations in front of me while the singer pants the word “MEN” over and over.

Oh yeah.

This is heaven on a dance floor.

The scene around me has my hormones hormoaning, as well as those of all the beautiful bodies that surround me, panting Molko's declaration of “MEN” right back at him. Front and center in the audience is Molko's biggest fan, jumping up and down waving his arms high in the air, a corn bred mid-western looking frat boy who had either been on the bad end of a “do a whole bunch of speed and go to the Placebo concert” dare or was a “now that I'm in California I can finally come out of the closet” case having his first indoctrination into something called Pride. The idea that it might have been a speed-dare makes sense, as earlier when he had been pushing his way to the front through the already sardined crowd, he didn't seem to care how many small girls he trampled on, or how many elbows ended up in his side, or how many hands were grabbing his ass. That last part wasn't my fault. Where did he expect my hands to be? There was no room for them to be anywhere else! And if you're gonna trample small girls to get close to a hunky man singing about men, you're asking for it really.

Brownies? Yeah. (A short anecdote)

Rachel and I are A+ stoners. We smoke until we can't think of anything else but brownies.

"You know what sounds completely amazing right now?"

"Brownies."

"You read my fucking mind."

"Well, today is our lucky day, because I made brownies yesterday."

"You are brilliant. Let's go."

So into the kitchen we went, mouths salivating in eager anticipation of that moist chocolate cake, slightly crispy on top, perfectly gooey in the middle… and oh, a tall glass of rockin' cold milk to wash it down with.

Smiling ear to ear like a couple of village idiots, Rachel opened the refrigerator door to reveal the most horrifying sight ever:

The milk carton was empty.

Our worlds shattered into layers of confusion and disbelief as our eyes passed from brownie plate to empty milk carton and back again. Our giddy smiles turned into disenfranchised frowns, and Rachel stood there shaking the empty milk carton saying, "Oh shit, RD. We're in a commercial."

A Thousand Words

This is me in 1995. I think it sums everything up quite perfectly.

The Alaska Logs: Prologue

In the summer of 2004, I embarked on a journey to fulfill a life long dream: To be a housekeeper at a lodge in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Alaska; to sleep in a moldy wall tent; watch my mom make out with someone other than my dad; break my ankle; and smoke more pot than I had cumulatively smoked in my life up to that point.

Along the way, I met a leprechaun, a navy man, a pirate who lived in a tree, and a whole bunch of Russians. There were Hawaiians with ukuleles, rednecks with confederate flags, and a baby eater or two. I made friends with a man on crack, a man named Coke, won the race, broke the cup, drank it all and spat it up. That's right, this was Denali National Park, Alaska.

In the land of the free, Denali stands as a no-holds-barred zone where even the one deputy in a couple hundred mile radius will tell you, “If I have to drive two hours to take your ass back to the Fairbanks jail because you were being drunk and stupid, you can bet we ain't gonna be stoppin' for no happy meals.”

About twice a month, I'd get the courage and strength to try and tell everyone back in the lower 48 what was going on up in Denali. As the emails progressed, they got weirder and weirder. It was hard to believe our daily existence, let alone try to put it into words. That being said, there are still many stories that haven't been told: There was the Talkeetna Blue-Grass Festival, the trip up to the Arctic Ocean, and the dramatic conclusion that included a man in a Superman shirt and the words “little asshole” over and over and over.

Over the next several weeks, in a series of posts labeled “Alaska Logs,” I'll be presenting my emails back home in full, overwhelmingly odd, uncensored format. Most of them were written in some kind of “state,” like the “state” of being on the end of a week long bender, or a mushroom trip, or about to start one of those two. There'd be so much activity going on in the campgrounds that finding time to write was usually limited to the time between sunset and sunrise, which, at the height of summer, dwindled down to, oh, about five minutes. So the writing behind the stories is erratic and partially incomplete, but when I got back to earth, my friends at home clearly seemed to have gotten the joke.

But before we get into all of those, here's a little preview in the form of a flickr set. As a housekeeper, I found it my duty to document (on camera) the state of people's rooms that we had to clean. 2004 was definitely before the camera phone boom, and I was working it old skool with an arsenal of disposable point and clicks. I hope you enjoy the tour of people's stuff, and the occasional left-over-pizza-as-tip:

The Alaska Logs: June 1, 2004

Week one, e-mail one:

Alright folks,
First up, a plea for food. You know me, I don't like to be a picky person, I'm a roll with the punches kinda guy. But I'm very concerned about the food issue going on here. I saw the movie Super Size Me, and it really makes a good point about what eating a Mac Donald's diet will do to your body. Obviously no one eats Mac Donald's three times a day for a month, but that's basically what's going on here at the Crow's Nest. I was weary about eating eggs and sausage everyday for breakfast, complimented by anything fried lunches. But my "willingness to go with what ever" was broken when one of the cooks, a sweetheart named Beatrice from Anaheim, California, showed me the artificial butter that the potatoes were sautéed in, followed by the “eggs” that were poured out of a carton. Everything we eat here is processed and sautéed in artery hardening artificial butter. I can't stomach the idea of paying $52.50 per week to take a sledge hammer to my health.

So I'm sending a plea out to everyone for some food.

Everything here is ridiculously expensive. If I got off the meal plan, I'd easily blow my whole paycheck on granola and cereal. I can't store anything perishable, so things that can be eaten right out of the package or heated up with water are what I'm limited to. Think oatmeal, various granola type bars, tea, coffee, hot choco, trail mix. That would be awesome. I'm getting a squirrel proof container soon, so I'll be all set.

I feel really torn making this request, but I think it's for the best. If I opted for a bagel instead of whatever fake fried item they happen to be serving that day, it'd set me back about an hour's wages.

Groveling done. Let's back this train up a bit.

I'm in freakin' Alaska! After a week, I can tell you, this is going to be a real test of endurance, but it will be completely be worth it. I am looking forward to saying "I survived 13 weeks at the Crow's Nest, and fell in love with 13 weeks at Denali."

The conditions here are pretty intense, and the conditions we're working under are even more intense. It's a good thing we all have great sense of humors, because a lot of times, all we are able to do is double over in laughter.

Here's a little bit of the set-up:

The valley here, about a mile from the entrance of Denali National Park, is definitely a redneck wonderland. The people come at you with a heavy fist of intimidation, as they smoke cigarettes and swig beer from their log cabins which smell like decades of smoking. I haven't seen any mullets, but tons of male ponytails, shit kickers, Stetsons, leather biker garb, basically everything that wreaks of redneck. I've already heard the phrase "You don't like fried food, what kind of American are you?" Good thing I've gotten my chops having grown up in Lakeside. Every monster truck blaring heavy metal makes me think "And I feel like I just got home."

So needless to say, the conditions at the Nest follow suit. Master Crowfoot sits up in his mansion on top of the hill (really), while us minions work in the rain and the mud to keep things going at the Lodge. Our reward is going home to our leaky tents hungry. We face "termination" at every step, and no amenity is provided for except hot shower (bonus!), and potable water (barely).

Despite the abysmal conditions, we're all carrying through with pretty incredible spirits. It has forced us to quickly re-orient what we find important. For instance, my greatest thrill the other day was the fact that I remembered to surreptitiously make an extra sandwich at lunch time (which was provided for on our $52.50 per week meal plan), to stuff into my pocket so I could stow it away for dinner (not provided for $52.50 per week). We were silly with excitement when one of us "stole" a piece large dinner roll from the kitchen. We shared it amongst ourselves like pigeons at the train station. All this really makes me excited about the strength of the human spirit.

The Alaska Logs: Goonies Never Say Die

Week four, email two:

June 14, 2004

Today, the cook who showed me the diarrhea-inducing fake butter our restaurant uses, told me she added a generous supply of extra squirts to the owner's meals, and they came back telling her how much they loved it. High five.

Also, I placed second in a race! I've never entered anything remotely athletic before, but I heard there was a 5k race in the park, benefiting an AIDS Outreach program in Alaska, so I signed up. I know I like to run, but I just thought I'd be lounging off in the distance while the real runners took stride. But low and behold, I came in second! Hmmm, there's a 10k midnight-sun race in Fairbanks on the 19th.... Maybe I'll sign up for that too.

Hitchhiking is the preferred method of getting around when you're without a vehicle, like 99% of us Nester's. I took my maiden hitchhiking voyage last week, as every day supplies that you can't get in Denali for under ten bucks started to become scarce; like toothpaste and batteries. With my favorite sailor, Jim, and Russian housekeeper, Dimitri at my side, we took the Alaskan Interior by storm armed with our thumbs and handsome good looks. The first car we showed a little bit of thumb to slammed on its breaks to pick us up. We were headed two hours north to Fairbanks, home to probably the farthest north Wal-Mart on the planet, but this compadre was only going 15 miles up the road to Healy, home of the all-night drink-eden, The Totem. From Healy, it took a little more elbow grease, but our patience was rewarded with a hot-blue Oldsmobile convertible. Top down, rock music blaring, the perfect cotton ball clouds in the sky, and sun shining brightly down, he brought us all the way to Fairbanks, where we spent the majority of the day fending off desert-like heat and bushwhacking through two miles of highway tundra to the Wal-Mart at the edge of the horizon. Not a mirage, the package of bagels for the same prices as a single bagel in Denali made us dance with delight and joy.

But now we were left to hitchhike home, fighting the same blazing sun with the added joy of ten pounds of food strapped to our backs. The only thing to do was keep walking south with thumbs out, and keep walking. And walking. And walking. And walking. Staying put only meant that clouds of mosquitoes would descend on you, shielding you from being seen by any passing motorists. Hours passed, and it began to appear we just might end up walking all 200 miles back to the Nest. To keep from allowing our tempers to get the best of us, and end up stopping cars by brawling in the middle of the highway, we split up, with Jim going on a head, and Dimitri and I sticking together. After a few more hours of mosquito damage, we found refuge in a bar where we inhaled cheese burgers and Alaska Summer Ales.

Once we decided to brave it back in the mosquito country again, we lucked out with two girls driving a pick up truck puling over going to Denali. They told us to hop into the back and lay low. Dimitri and I looked at each other, shook our heads in disbelief and jumped in. Of course we would be riding all the way back to Denali the same way we got out of there: with the wind blowing through our hair, looking straight up into the unmoving cloud-dotted sky while the horizon races by in the periphery.

We've already had our first casualty of the season. Tony, the Costa Rican kid, was given the boot on Friday. Many of us suspected that by our first pay day, some one would be ousted off the island. I just didn't expect it to be him... such an awesome spark to have around, I already miss his presence in our little camp. There wasn't any one thing that he was fired for, I honestly think they were just making an example out of him. They made a list of complaints, which they could easily make about any one of us, and they gave him 30 minutes to leave the property. He was a front desk guy, and he made a couple mistakes, but nothing malicious or anything really awful. I saw him later that night and he decided to leave AK and hang out in Seattle for a while before returning to Iowa where he goes to school. So random, and such a bummer, it's like they're waging an unnecessary war against us, they people they've employed for the summer.

Later that night two more folks were given the boot. Steve and Angela were busted letting off fireworks in the campground at 2am. Now, if you're going to get fired, doing with fireworks shooting off in the background, and master Crowfoot chasing after you with a shot gun is a pretty good way. It's safe to say Steve and Angela wanted to leave. Steve was a cook, and he had already completely missed a shift (leaving all us workers hungry for breakfast), and he had talked about going south to Homer. I think Angela fell for him a bit over the past couple weeks, and she wanted to take off with him. Angela was this gem of a girl, a cabbage patch hippie with cute cheeks and long braids. She'd always exclaim "RD!" when ever she'd see me, and give me a hug. Those hugs will be missed. I spent an evening on my tent porch with Steve who told me all about his time summiting Mt McKinley (a 22 day hike) and his time running from the law.

Another kid, Travis, was with Steve and Angela when the firework bonanza occurred. Apparently Candy, our favorite demonoid monster manager, has a hit out for Travis' head. Travis is an attention seeker, you might say. Being around him is kind of like being seven when you've just learned how to say “faaaaag.” But that's okay, in fact, even though he's the bitterest seven year old you're likely to ever meet, there's just something endearing about him we just can't get enough of. That being the case, Candy is out for blood. She must have pee'd herself when she found out he was with Steve and Angela that night, but Travis is one of only three of our highly prized drivers at the lodge, who work overtime to shuttle around the endless sea of Japanese tourists that fill the Crow's Nest (and who he does karate chops behind). Tonight I heard Candy's voice screaming over Travis' walkie-talkie, as he was wandering through the “forbidden zone,” i.e., being in the employee campground while on duty. I fear for our future with Travis.

So the mood around the camp has been a little low lately, having seen three people get nixed. Some people are muttering under their breath that they want to leave, and others (myself included) feel there's so much left un-discovered here (personally and adventure wise), it's worth it to stay for the long haul.

The Alaska Logs: I Was Late To Work Because I Had To Buy Someone Crack

Week five, email three:

June 24, 2004

I'm trying really hard to get Saturday and Sunday off, so I can make my way to Fairbanks for the Midnight Sun 10K race. But the conceptual nature of saying "can we swap days off" to a couple of Russians is proving to be more than I can handle.

“No, it means I would work Thursday and Friday, and you would work on Saturday and Sunday.”

“But Saturday and Sunday we have off.”

“I know, that's why I'm asking if we can trade. So I can go to Fairbanks on Saturday.”

“Oh, sorry, we're not going to Fairbanks on Saturday. If we were, you could come with us.”

“Thanks.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the idea that I can make it up to Fairbanks after work, run a race, and be back before my next shift seems do-able.

Our young Paul Newman look-a-like shuttle driver, Luke, who ran the 5k race with me, won't stop egging me on. He's definitely going. We're in the middle of our work day, and every time we pass each other with a pile of dirty bathmats, Luke finds a way to remind me how much I deserve a break, and to do something really special for myself.

Oh, what's this?

It's a nicely folded newspaper left by the guests from this room that just checked out.

And, oh, the front page...

it's about tonight's big race!

Amazingly, directly underneath the paper is a big box of brownies and a six pack of beer. Radio all housekeepers, we struck gold! Bring the bottle openers cause we're celebrating, and RD is going to Fairbanks after work today!

Fast forward to 11:00 pm, Fairbanks.

I'm wandering around the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, architecturally, a modern ghost town meets the Soviet Block. I made it here in one hitch, picked up by an older gentleman in a large red truck. It was unclear to me if gentleman's intentions were in any way sexually motivated, as I was in my running shorts and he fit the profile of men who I had seen on “professional” outings in the past. It's approaching midnight, it's 80 degrees out, the sun is blasting, and characters from Tony the Tiger to Military Men In Diapers dot the starting line.

I've never run this far in my life. This is a real race. I have a bib number, there's nearly 4,000 of us. I'm wondering how I got into this, and what it is I'm actually doing. Then the gun shoots, and we're off.

Somewhere around the 5th mile, a bunch of unrelated but interconnected thoughts start running through my head. Things about the work I'm doing, the place I'm living, the things that have occurred over the past month, this race I'm running... and a word comes to mind. Endurance. Will I endure another two months here? Will I endure another mile in this race? My body starts to run on it's own, and the mind focuses on that one word...Endurance.

At some point, my legs decide they don't want to push me so fast, and I walk a couple times. Even so, I amaze myself by finishing in 52 minutes, the 69th person to cross the finish line. A sudden adrenaline rush comes over me that makes me realize why people say racing is an addiction... kind of like getting a tattoo, but probably a little more productive for your body. I've never done anything quite like this, and here I am... AK, midnight, 80 degrees, just finished a race. What?

It's 5 am. I had two hours of sleep at the UAF dorms. A fellow by the name of Mac that Luke and I met was kind enough to take us in for the night. Luke had the day off and decided to hang out in the F-banks for the day, and I decided to make it to my 8am shift.

It's 6am. A truck pulls up to me in response to my thumb on the highway. He wants to know where I'm going and how much I can give him. I figure I'd be cool with giving him $20 for gas. But he says that he's not really going in that direction, and $20 would only get us half way there. I agree to fill his tanks and give him a couple extra bucks for his kindness in going out of his way to get me home. I figure maybe he's just looking to help someone out for a little pay off. You already know where this story is going.

He starts in on how he needs to visit a friend of his first, very quickly. Something about a spare tire... and that we'll stop and get gas first. I'm tired, delirious, eager to get home. Somewhere in my confusion I gave him $40, and filled his tank with $40. I think I meant to give him $40 and fill his tank with $20, or vice versa. Never the less, $80 out of my pocket, we're on the road, looking for this friend with a spare tire. The fellow starts making frantic calls on his cell phone as we head further and further into the ghetto of F-banks. I know there's no spare tire... unless spare tire is a code word for crack. The ghetto is filled with broken up homes, rusted out trailers, busted swing sets, over grown lawns, and the most red neck lawn furniture/ornaments you can imagine. But the friend with the spare tire is no where to be found.

The cell phone calls get more frantic, "Where the fuck is that fucking fucker?" and I start to wonder how on earth I'm going to get out of this situation. We pass by a random guy on a bike who claims to know where "that fucking fucker" is. He hops in the truck, and we make a dash for it. Random guy hops out of the truck. A tinted window truck pulls up. I see my $40 and crack rocks exchange hands. All I want is to not get shot, so I lay low, and act calm.

It's 7am. My ride smokes his crack, and offers me a hit. Not in your life buster... but now at least we're on the road. I use his cell phone to call the front desk at the Nest to let them know I'm just now leaving F-banks, and will be there in 2 hours. Now that he's smoked his crack, he's much calmer, and focused on getting to Denali. Phew. He's paranoid as fuck though. "Is that a trooper behind us? I think it's a trooper. Let me pull over. When the trooper comes, you're driving. Do you drive? Do you have a license? I don't."

He gets nervous about the fact that there's a bit of crack in the door handle. "I gotta get this out of here, just in case." We pull over, he gets out, and he begins to snort the crack out of the handle of the door. Am I really witnessing this right now? Is this for real? Is a man seriously snorting crack out of a door handle in front of me on the side of the road in nowhere Alaska?

Of course, my head is beaming with thoughts. I think of Colin Thurborne. He's an English journalist who took a trek across Siberia. He spoke of being stranded in a town where the whole population had turned violent... drinking vodka all day and stabbing each other all night. He found refuge in a hospital with only one patient who would cry and scream all night. So the  realization comes that this is just another adventure. This is just another one of those freakin' bananas stories that I will have forever. Seven hours earlier, my body was soaring with energy and adrenaline, feeling so phenomenal having just finished a race. And now my body is reacting in the same way, but this time I'm scared out of my mind. But yet, I'm enduring.

Apparently $40 of crack gets you from Fairbanks to Healy, a town 15 miles outside of our Denali canyon. I knew I'd get a ride easily from Healy back to the Nest, but the fact that this crack head wanted to be a dick about taking me an extra 15 miles was the ice cream on this cherry blossom pie. Within 30 seconds, a driver with a rafting adventure company picked me up. Appropriately, his name was Coke.

I clock in an hour and a half late. I see Elizabeth, my charming house keeper, and I give her a great big hug. I'm useless, trying to digest what I had just been through. I think to myself, we'll just get through this day, and we'll have tomorrow off, and everything we'll be awesome. But, you know, life has other plans.

Candy, the Manager of the front desk and housekeeping staff, is a drunk. If she's not at least half in the bag, she's all the way in it. And she's an angry drunk to boot. Today was the day that she decided to unleash her wrath on the housekeeping crew. I keep hearing from Elizabeth, Candy is pissed, we're making mistakes, we're too slow, we're going to get canned. I hear from other people she's making threats to fire half of us and start picking people off the street to replace us.

Travis, the angry leprechaun, comes to me with a worried look on his face... "If anything should happen to you RD, the restaurant down the road is hiring, and they have great accommodations." I get a pat on the back from my favorite front desk-er Joann... "RD, she has it out for you, so watch your back." But her face lights up when she comes to tell me that my sweetheart back home,  Ben, called, and my face lights up as an immediate response. I'm saved by the thought that as soon as lunch comes, I can call Ben, and feel a little bit of relief.

Lunch comes, and I'm making a b-line to the pay phone, but I don’t quite make it. Candy announces the housekeepers only get a 15 minute lunch today. It's pizza. It's from somewhere other than here, so that means it's actually good. I go to grab a slice and run so I don't clock back in late. I'm with my lunch, I'm starving. I'm clocked in. I'm going to go into one of the cabins that I was working on and eat in peace. I trip on the steps leading up to the cabins and drop the pizza to the ground. It's all over.

I go into the cabin I was going to eat in, and break down. We use walkie talkies with each other while on duty, so in my moment of desperation, I call on the radio ... "Elizabeth, can you come to room 508, right now?" She sees the tears running down my face, and lays down next to me on the bed. How can this be happening? We both want to know, because we're so confused. I tell her how dropping my lunch was the final straw, and we both double over in laughter. Such ridiculousness. So bizarre. So incredible. But we decide we're going to toast the end of the day and have a real fancy dinner to celebrate.

The Alaska Logs: If It Happened Anywhere Else, I'd Be Shocked

Week eight, email four:

July 16, 2004

I know my mom is waiting in nervous anticipation to see how much of “Mom's Wild Adventure In Alaska” trip I write about. Don't worry mom. I won't tell all the lurid details of your visit by email. Instead, I'll wait until I can tell folks in person! Let me just say that my mom is the raddest gal I know. Having the experience of carrying her up the stairs to her Crow's Nest cabin is one I will always treasure. Yes, this is Denali, where time and space don't exist, and reality turns on its head.

“If it happened anywhere else, I'd be shocked. But it happened here.”

This was the first thing Ernie said to me the morning after my mom's first night in Denali. Ernie was a fire-fighter-turned-Crow's-Nest-shuttle-driver from Arizona with an “always a little sweaty” / “gentle giant” presence. This particular morning his eyebrows were pointing unusually high and his forehead was scrunched up with a look of barely-controlled-panic. As we made our way to the front desk, Ernie unraveled a series of “if it happened anywhere else, I'd be shocked” events which had occurred so far this morning, while I was still sleeping away the evening's mis-adventures.

The scene that morning began with a bus load of Japanese tourists and a missing cook.

The Japanese arrived especially early to catch a special breakfast buffet. This was indeed special, as the Crow's Nest normally forbade breakfast for guests. This breakfast would be served by the kitchen's brand new cook, Matt. Matt was probably the sixth cook to come in (and out) of the Nest's kitchen this summer. I hadn't seen him around much until the night before, when he was in the “hang out group” that I was in, celebrating my mom's arrival in the canyon. By the time I had seen all sorts of worlds begin and end that evening, Matt was boarding the all-night shuttle to the no-last-call bar 15 miles up the road, The Totem. The Totem is the kind of place where every story that begins with “So last night at the Totem” is a bad one.

Fast forward to 7am, and the Japanese tourists. Ernie saw that there was a big crowd, and a little confusion, so he stepped in to try and help. Brad, the restaurant's manager asked Ernie to go wake up Matt, and get him into the kitchen by any means possible. Ernie went and came back empty handed three times. In between trips, Ernie was handed a knife and instructed to start cutting fruit to serve to the Japanese to keep them from starting a hello-kitty riot. Finally, it was sudden death:

“Ernie, tell Matt he has 15 minutes to get in here or off the property.”

Needless to say, Matt never made it into the kitchen, and he was out looking for a new job within 15 minutes.

That happened, and then the sun vanished.

Literally, it vanished.

With the wild fires burning all over Alaska, it was only a matter of time before all the smoke started choking out our little canyon, blocking out the sun entirely. But since the sun doesn't set much up here, there was no night-time to relieve us from smoky orange haze with visibility barely reaching across the street. By the time we lost sight of the anything resembling nature in our periphery, cabin fever had set in to the point of panic and delirium.

Out of the haze, Ashley and Carol appeared. Our new prep-cook and waitress were heralded with open arms and porch parties featuring copious amounts of Key Stone beer, billowing bongs and “My Friends” being sung on the Ukulele. Things were so loose and laze-fare in fact, that Carol's boyfriend Victor became a regular at the campground, even though non-employees were strictly forbidden from Tent City, per order of the Crowfeet. On the outside, Victor and Carol looked like a charming young couple, straight out from the suburbs of Fairbanks, complete with big hair, bangs, and beer swigging goodness that only real Alaskans can offer. But on the inside, specifically the inside of Ashley and Carol's tent, things were a different story.

“Is there somebody there?”

“It's me, Ashley. I had to come here, I didn't know where else to go. They were fighting all night.”

“What?”

“Carol and Victor.”

I was used to being woken up by the sounds of foxes eating left over sandwiches or squirrels eating nachos outside the tent, but not by a whimpering, moaning lump of person emanating from one corner of our tent at five in the morning. I had already been surprised by an impromptu tent-porch party at around 2am, and figured that this was just more of the same. To my surprise, Ashley was there; huddled in the corner; hair a mess; eyes watery, puffy, and red; body clearly in some sort of state of shock. Apparently Carol and Victor either forgot or were too drunk to care that Ashley was in the tent with them, as they proceeded to tear each other in half with their loud and hateful words. All night long, they yelled and yelled and yelled at each other. Ashley just stayed hidden inside her sleeping bag, unable to break free of the semi-violent outburst that was unfolding before her. During one of the shout-breaks, she made her escape to our tent when I found her quivering and weeping.

A couple hours later I was housekeeping away, and I heard on our radio system... "Front desk to maintenance... there is a strange man in Ashley's bed, he peed on her sleeping bag and won't leave. Can you go take care of this?"

What?

What?

Victor peed in her bed and won't leave? Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot where I was for a second.

Later in the day I found the discarded, peed on sleeping bag on the trail between the restaurant and our tent city. Candy being Candy refused to let us wash it for Ashley, saying it was too big for the washing machine. We have a fucking industrial size washer, which could fit ten sleeping bags. Candy should have just said "I am a mean spirited person, and I refuse to let anyone have comfort.”

My head had been spinning all day from the morning's freak out, and a run after work was in order to calm my nerves. Once I clocked out for the day, I started jogging down Denali's only street, where I found a little path that lead me to a secluded spot along the Nenana River. Away from the voices and broom sticks of the Nest, my mind started to latch on to the sound of the roaring river, noticing how beautiful it was. Even under this orange glow that permeates everything, the river just keeps being beautiful weather or not we can see it. It bums me out that we forget to notice because we're so busy being mean to each other. But to have this moment is a blessed one.

Not even ten minutes into my meditation, I was presented with a horrifying sight.

It was Carol. She appeared before me as if she were imitating what meat looks like after being put through a grinder.

“It's my ankle. I rolled it.

You did more than roll your ankle, lady. You and your boyfriend ripped each other to shreds all day in the woods is what you did. And now I get to take you back to the crow's nest. Great!

Brad, the restaurant manager, had been privy to the day's activities, and was smiling like the creepiest old man you can think of walking in on a cheerleader who fainted before getting into the shower. He was ready to fire Carol just for having invited Victor to the employee campgrounds, resulting in his awesome display of piss-power, but having heard her and Victor yelling at each other all day from the gas station across the street was just icing on his cake.

He saw me with Carol around my shoulder and came to help get her up the hill.

“Let's get you to your tent, then we'll load your stuff into my truck, and I'll take you down to the bottom of the hill, and you can hitch hike yourself back to Fairbanks, and get that ankle checked out.”

That was all he said. And then he laughed like Gargamel from The Smurfs.

The sleeping bag remained on our trail, soaked in piss.

I'm not at all surprised that Brad left a battered woman with a sprained ankle on the side of the road to hitch to Fairbanks after firing her. That's the kind of guy Brad is. He's not all bad... but everyone here can envision him punching his mom or eating a baby and laughing his hideous evil laugh while doing it.

Oh, speaking of baby-eaters, another great quote I heard about our management was "If I were hitch hiking, and Carol or Mike Crowfoot pulled over to pick me up, I would say, 'I'd rather spend six hours in a car with a baby eating rapist.'"

Yeah, and there's Candy too... who said to my MOM, "It's a good thing your son wasn't working today, because one of our guests reported a theft from their cabin today." Then she flew away on her broom stick.

Believe it or not, between our employers and all the odd things that occur, there are moments for bliss, fun, excitement, and full-on roars of laughter. Most days I wake up feeling like a Muppet, but this tends to occur anywhere I go; just this goofy, 'foot loose and fancy free' kid ready to attack the world. Every once and a while I get a little weighed down, but all I need is for Kermit to come in and give me a little pep talk, and I'm ready to Gonzo the whole place down again. So with said peppy attitude, doing housekeeping is actually a fun time. I mean really, all we do are lame tasks like making beds, while goofing off, using our bodies for physical work, and spending most of our time outside taking in the sun. It comes as no surprise that we adopted a policy that if we find alcohol in a checked out room, we must consume it immediately. Today this included a glass of wine. Our biggest score was three beers and a plate full of brownies. You can believe the chocolate stained smiles on that day... "I'm drinking beer, eating brownies, making a bed, and it's only 10 am."

It also helps to have people like Jin-Son on your housekeeping crew. Jin-Son is an adorable part time housekeeper, who is a full time cook at the fancier Chalet resort. He's fresh off the plane from Korea, and can barely communicate in English. But just the type of character he is leads me to believe he can barely communicate in any language.

“Where is Lizarbet?”

Jin-Son had a crush on Elizabeth, or Lizarbet, as he could say.

“She has the day off, Jin-Son. She'll be here tomorrow.

"Oh, I am sad. She is so beauriful. I miss her."

Then imagine an Engrish version of “You Are So Beautiful To Me.”

The Alaska Logs: What If We See A Care Bear?

This is the last email I sent during my days as a housekeeper in Alaska. The final three weeks after this email snowballed into an unending series of friends visiting, parties and ambulances. I never got to writing about all that. Look for the yet-to-be written final chapter soon!

Week eleven, email five:

August 02, 2004

Holy Toledo... the home stretch approaches. It's officially August; darkness is settling in, and the cold and the rain are signaling the end of summer. I have a bunch of visitors coming up, plans to see a blue grass festival, to hit the arctic circle, and to grab a ferry to see some glaciers and awesome coastal towns. So, I have a feeling this month is going to fly by.

I took a journey out to Valdez a couple weeks ago, you know where Exxon decided to blow a load all over the Prince William Sound back in 1991. It was a small caravan of Nesters, myself, Joann (our lovely front desker who's currently taking a week long siesta in Seattle, and coming back with a CAR!), Dan (Remember the monchichi’s? Think that with a beer instead of a banana in his hand), and Luke (young Paul Newman). The trip started out as a free trip to Prudhoe Bay, the starting point of the Alaska Pipeline at the arctic ocean, through a friend of Dan's. But that plan kept falling through, then coming back up, then falling through again. So we took matters into our own hands and decided to rent a car (in Fairbanks... cheaper, and they don't charge by the mile like they do in Denali), and head south to the other end of the Alaska Pipeline, Valdez.

I finagled my days off so I could get four days off in a row, and I was one stoked little puppy. We'd be free from the nest, free to explore this enormous state, and free to our own devices. Pure bliss, but I had a sneaking suspicion once the four days were up, coming back to the nest would be the hardest button to button. So we piled in the car, put the pedal to the metal, and started our journey south. We decided to take the Denali Highway, which is a gravel road, maybe 300 miles on which you can only go ~40mph if you're lucky. The potholes and boulders prevent you from making any real speed, but time was on our side, as was the beauty that is AK!

We kept stopping along the road to soak in the sights. Mountains that could inspire poets to write epics about the glaciers running through them demanded our attention. Being cooped up so long in our nest, we had forgotten that this is a place of remarkable beauty. There are things here for us beyond shuttle busses, tourists, RV parks, and gremlin employers. Joann may have been a little on the jaded side, but she made quite the blunt point by saying, "Denali is ugly. This is beautiful." Spots on, babe.

To drive to Valdez, one must summit the Thompson Pass. Thompson Pass gets over 300 feet of snow annually. It shows. The glacier that slices through the pass strikes you like a bolt of lightning. It shouts out "I am a glacier, and I am tearing the mountain in half." So wait, just yesterday I was making beds (and yes, you would be wooed by how I do my "hospital corners" and can fold the pillows into the comforter!), and today I am humbled by the magnificent force that is nature? I'm stopped to consider my life for a moment. Bananas.

Valdez is a fishing town. What does one do in a fishing town... but fish! We met up with a local fisherman who took us out into the sound so we could catch us some salmon. It was more than enough for us to just be sailing like free birds through the sound; to see wild life flourishing and no trace to the tourist's eye of the oil spillage. Otters floated by, and seals swam around us. But we were there to get a fish treasure! I hope our fisherman guide got a kick out of us fishing novices who were busy hooking lines to the boat, dropping poles into the water, and catching jellyfish rather than doing any real fishing. But for all our follies, we did come back with four ~2 1/2 ft Salmon. Joann was the starlet of the boat, she caught 2, Dan caught 1, and the fisherman got one too, which he let Joann reel in. I lost one under the boat, and Luke's put up such a fight it broke the line. Apparently most people catch 30-35 on their rides out, but hey, we got 4!

Our hard work on the boat was celebrated by a trip to Ernesto's, a Mexican joint. I was hoping for a margarita, but the waitress kindly informed us that they didn't have their liquor license... yet. She was also a few frijoles short of understanding basic Mexican food flare. When I asked for the carne asada burrito, she asked if I wanted beef or chicken. I couldn't keep a straight face when I answered "beef please. thanks."

That night we found refuge at a camp ground called Blueberry Lake. We cruised the campgrounds for a little bit, then found ourselves asking the question, why get a camp spot when we could just sleep under these picnic tables at this nice little gazebo? The gazebo was butted up to the lake, so it was a little heavenly little spot, right near all the waterfalls that drape Valdez like veils.

As youngians do on great camping adventures, there was smoke and drink to be shared by all. Our drink was a dangerous combination of vodka and power ade, and the smoke provided perfect psychadelicness for the cloud layer that was invading Blueberry Lake. Before we knew it, we could barely see 10 feet in front of us... we were literally in a cloud on the mountain. Strange thoughts ran through our minds... what if a scary clown walks on by? what if those creepy girls from the Shining go skipping by? What if we see a Care Bear? The possibilities were endless.

One kind of funny, but kind of scary thing about sleeping out in the open, not in a tent, is that any random thing can come up to you and find you. This happened. I was woken up by the feeling of something pawing at me, and I just thought... no, this is not happening, I am going to be attacked by a bear while sleeping at the foot of a lake. I really hope it's a Care Bear. The adrenaline that flowed through my veins for that split second got my "fight or flight" motors going, and I looked up to see black and fur. Oh fuck. Oh wait, heh, it's just a dog! I started laughing, then let the dog sniff and lick around. Then it was back to sleep to dream of salmon, dogs, and scary clowns trampling through clouds. Yay.

We camped through the entire trip, but managed to never used our tents. After Valdez, we drove out to Anchorage, and sans a proper place to stay, literally crashed in the lawn of a gal that Dan met a few weeks earlier. It was late, and we had already accidentally passed out on the grass in a random park for about an hour, so the lawn of a real house was great idea. The gal found us on her grass around 6am, and woke us up to invite us to sleep inside her house where it would be a bit warmer, and mosquito free! She had a little 4 month old kitten who proceeded to paw us in the face all morning as we tried to sleep. Curious dogs one morning, pawing kittens the next. Right on!

Sadly, and I could feel this coming, the return "home" was an unwanted one. You know how in cartoons, when they show the wicked castle, it's always surrounded by thunder clouds, with lightning and rain? Yeah, that was the scene as we neared Denali. We could see the beautiful blue skies behind us, and the storm that hovered over the Denali canyon in front of us. I really don't know how we managed to keep going, but we ended up back at the Nest... and there were stories for us to hear upon our arrival.

That week after our return was the closest I've come to quitting. I was so close I actually had started writing my resignation letter in my mind. The stories we heard were among the usual crappy dealings from the owners and Candy. Carol Crowfoot called one front desk person an idiot to her face, Candy kept on her "you're fucking it up" rampages, and so forth. But the straw for me was the story I heard about how Candy drunkenly stumbled into our camp ground and started mouthing off about Travis, our angry little leprechaun.

The Crowfeet had started putting "Drivers Wanted" signs all over Denali, and even in Healy, 15 miles north of here. Travis was a driver, we already had three and didn’t need any more. The management merely had it out for him because of his attitude, rather than anything he was doing wrong. It was clear they were getting ready to shit-can the boy, and you know, putting up flyer's for his job around town was the more dignified way of letting him know rather than telling him to his face.

The reports from the folks in Tent City were that a few days after the flyer's started appearing around town, Candy made an unannounced visit to Tent City, our little haven where we're allowed to get away from Candy and the Crowfeet. She was drunk, belligerent, and was just yelling about Travis to anyone who would listen, including Travis himself, who was at the campground.

At this point, this is just abuse, plain and simple. We do not get paid enough to watch a drunken douche bag completely trash one of our friends on our off time. Why should I keep working here if all we're handed back is abuse? I'd rather have gotten back into the truck with my crack smoking friend than work another day for these folks. The day I heard about all this, I decided to do two things... wait until the morning to see how I felt, and talk to my mom. I knew my mom wouldn't tell me what to do, but she'd provide enough insight to get me to look at the situation from different sides.

So I woke up the next morning, and I felt sick to my stomach clocking in. I walked into one of the cabins, and I just started to write. I wrote this poem that basically spelled out "Leave now!" Elizabeth even said "by staying here, we're accepting something that is unacceptable. We're saying that this is okay." So I was ready to start packing my bags by 5 O'clock.

I had this nagging suspicion that talking to my mom would either give me the confidence to walk or the strength to pull through for another month. And sure enough, I was right. What I got out of our conversation was "If you can leave with love and compassion in your heart, leave right now. But if you have anger and hatred, it will find you again later." I really don't want to encounter anyone like Candy ever again. So I'm still a nester...but only for another 20 days! Within that time, I hope to find the strength within myself to leave and say "thanks," rather than "I pissed in your iced tea, but you probably couldn't taste it under all the vodka." Heh, I might say both!

I miss you Travis. Come by and crash our tent again.

The Electrifying Conclusion

This post is my final in the mp3-of-the-day series from my rock and roll recording sessions in San Diego. This post also serves as the final chapter of The Alaska Logs, stories from my summer working as a housekeeper in Denali National Park in Alaska. The title, The Electrifying Conclusion, is the name of the farewell Guided By Voices tour/film.

As the final weeks of the season approached, everything started to fall apart for the Crowfeet.

We, the summer employees who had slaved away all season to eat crappy fried food and sleep in moldy wall tents, were just done caring.

"Fine. Fire me," was the attitude amongst the Nesters towards the end. "You mean you might take away my toilet brush and give it to another jack-ass for a couple weeks until they get fed up with you and never come back? Well, shoot. I better stop turning off my two-way radio, taking showers in people's rooms, smoking pot instead of vacuuming, and pissing in the flower arrangements then."

Those of us who weren't fired stayed because what made it all worth it was our little community. As the original list of Nesters dwindled down to single digits, our bonds grew tighter and tighter. Perhaps a little too tight, as most of everybody was sleeping with each other, and for at least one Nester, Joanne, the bonds needed to be broken in order to save her impending marriage back home.

Under the guise that she was merely leaving for a week to ten days to go back home, save her relationship, then return with a car, we sent her off back to the lower 48 in the hopes that we would see her beautiful smile again, and she would bring wheels to take us all out of Denali.

The funny thing is, we bought it. We waited day after day like puppies awaiting mothers milk, salivating over the thought of having access to a car. But we should have known better. We sent her back home and expected her to come back? None of us would have come back. So when the call finally came in to the front desk that she was pulling the plug, it became clear the only thing left to do was ditch the Nest.

"I heard it through the rumor mill that you're planning on leaving us on the 25th. Is that true?" Candy, the drunken manager, was always meddling into the affairs of her underlings. I was under contract to stay through the beginning of September. How she caught wind of the fact I had made a pact with two other Nesters, Alla and Elizabeth, to secretly rent a car and floor it to Anchorage with all our luggage in the back is beyond me. But there I was, face to face with the wickedest witch of the tundra, inside a small cramped room, her sipping her "iced (and probably long-island'd) tea" out of a tall orange plastic cup, the door closed behind me, no way out.

Clearly my only option was to lie. And badly.

“What? What on earth are you talking about?”

I denied it all up and down, but it was clear to the both of us that I had been found out, and I wasn't going to give in or butt out. We still kept pretending that I was going to continue working into September, even though I had friends from back home arriving left and right, and my attentions were clearly focused away from the lodge.

My visitor roster was the direct result of my bachelorhood in Boston, and internet hook ups. Luckily a lot of these one night stands turned into full fledged friendships, so much so, two of them dropped their busy Boston lives to come to Alaska to enjoy the adventure with me. A third one would even take me back to his home, carrying me on his back.

Joe.

When Joe arrived, it was like St. Rainbow walking through Graytopia. It was beautiful. By the end of night one, Joe and Nana, one of the old Hawaiian drunkards on deck with us, were drinking at the Lynx bar and arguing over who could give a better blow job. Nana was loosing to Joe's bravado (which was making every straight guy at the table turn bright red ... with curiosity), until Nana whipped out her trump card: “Well I can take my teeth out!”

Georg.

Georg's arrival overlapped Joe's by a night or two. This brought the number of guys I'd hooked Joe up with up to two. Georg also brought a feast for the emaciated Nesters; glorious amounts of cheese, crackers and wine. Not even in our normal lives did most of us treat ourselves to such luxuries. And here, the finest pate's and international wines were pouring out of his army-green duffel bag. We ate like kings, and slept the whole next day.

Ben.

I used to refer to this man as my “make-out buddy.” And now it was certain that post Alaska, instead of becoming a high priced NYC escort, I'd be moving to California to start a life with someone I hadn't been able to shake out of my head for the eight months we'd been on opposite coasts, pretending we liked it that way.

His arrival had been the topic of everybody's conversations for at least a week. Everybody knew Ben was coming because I wouldn't stop talking about it, and I wouldn't stop smiling like an idiot. Random people would help me with the countdown on a daily basis, “3 more days, RD!” they'd shout out to me on my mile hike to the bathrooms.

Literally in a superman shirt and superman skivvies, superman arrived at the lodge, and swept me away for good.

Long days of smiling and gazing into each other's eyes, knowing that we would soon be in a rental car with Elizabeth and Alla burning rubber away from Denali, made our reunion so peaceful and angelic, that we decided to take a small but adventurous camping trip in the park, just the two of us.

But as my entire summer had taught me, nothing makes it through Denali without being sucked into the vortex of Denali.

The journey of our camping trip started at the foot of some mountains being ripped open by glaciers. Our first day we had walked four miles from the road towards the mountains and set up camp, picking blue berries from the sides of the hills... just like all the grizzly bears we had seen the previous morning from the bus on the only road in or out of Denali National Park; a park the size of Massachusetts.

Little did my superman-clad super boy know what a role his ironic macho statement would make on our journey through Denali together. He was saving me from the Crowfeet and sour Candy, saving me from drifting off into the underbelly of NYC, and within the first twenty four hours of our camping trip, he would be saving me from being eaten by bears while laying helplessly in a rock quarry with a broken ankle.

Up to this point, I had survived relatively unscathed through the Denali vortex. Except for the run-in with the cracked out guy who picked me up hitchhiking, I didn't really have any experiences that would completely alter the course of my life like most people seemed to have. Now that I was with the sweetheart, and we were well away on our adventure, I figured I was safe, and that I had made it out. Such bravado is what gets you in trouble.

Winning the Civil War

There’s only one person I’ve ever let call me “Ardie.” The first time most people repeat my name after I’ve introduced myself, they say “Ardie?” And I have to say, “No, R … D,” stressing the D slightly more than the R to enforce the concept that you say them like two different letters.

Jim was the exception.

Of course he was. He was a hot little navy boy that would be spending the next three months with me holed up in some offspring of the Twilight Zone called Denali National Park in the middle of Alaska. I would have let him call me anything he wanted, as long as he continued to smile at me.

To Jim’s credit, he demonstrated he clearly knew that my name was comprised of two initials, and he figured out that it bugs the snot out of me when people conceptualize it as a name that starts with an “A” and ends in an –ie or –y. But Jim’s purpose in our relationship was to produce a rise out of me, and this he did on many occasions.

The relationship between straight men and gay men is an odd and potentially explosive one. It’s a relationship that has baffled me most of my life, and one I dedicate a good portion of my psyche trying to figure out and unravel. The fact that there is a “thing” to try to figure out at all may not be readily apparent until you’ve become the boy who plays “house” and not “cars,” or has more Madonna tapes than baseball cards, or wants to be a Carebear for Halloween. That’s when it becomes quite clear that there’s a major divide in the masculine continuum, you’re really skirting one edge of it, and you’re only six.

It’s true. At the age of six, I was a Carebear for Halloween. I’m sure my parents were pulling their hair out at the idea of sending a chubby cherub in a pink plastic costume to kindergarten. But they saw that nothing was going to stop me from running to school bursting with rainbows, and they were there to take the pictures of their pink Carebear arm in arm with a plastic costumed He-Man. In the 21+ years since that time, life has not taken many turns away from that picture.

And so entered Jim. He established himself as the alpha male of the group early on. There were twenty-odd of us twenty-something’s, all gathered in Denali, slated to work at a hotel for a summer, shuttling guests around, making their beds, cooking their dinners and rummaging through their garbage for left over food. Jim had arrived a full two weeks before any of us, laying electrical wire, digging ditches, putting cabins back on their foundations and getting drunk with the locals. He made it clear he had the biggest bravado of any of us, and the moment I saw him I could feel the molten waves of testosterone erupting out of him. He was fresh out of the Navy, he was in combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he could drink more alcohol than all of us put together, bed anyone he chose, and fight blind folded with one hand tied behind his back. Yes, a complete man’s man, a dude of dudes, the machismo of macho. But frankly, I wasn’t impressed.

...And Then Carebears Showed Up With Bells On

It's sort of like the closing a perfect circle.

I arrived in San Diego a few days ago to see my parents off to Peru for three weeks, take care of their house and dogs, and get together with a dear friend to record some rock and roll in the house I grew up in.

The start of summer vacations in high school meant I had completed a nine month sentence and could finally spend three months creating the world I fought to live in all the time. Until 3:30 every afternoon I was alone in the house, free to indulge my own little universe, limited only by my own curious and perverted imagination.

Summer vacation was where I learned how to search out for and make gay pen-pals across the US. It's where I made my first foray into public access broadcasting. It's where I bought my first bass guitar and learned the riff to “With Or Without You.” It's where I wrote my first song, “Horny Apple Pie,” on an acoustic guitar which I still use today. (You can tell I thought I was pretty clever for using the line “make me come again” in the song.)

But sharply at 3:30 every day, the white glare of my dad's pick-up would appear at the bottom of the hill, and I'd have roughly 45 seconds to put away the pot, porn, and pizza, effectively closing the door on RDtopia for the day.

I'd fantasize intensely about never having to worry about 3:30 again, and having free reign of the house to keep that special universe open for business day and night, crafting the most beautiful beacon to let others know of its existence on the universal map. I'd imagine an entire band set up in our living room; drums, guitars, amps, mics all left there to pick up and use whenever inspiration struck. I'd imagine smoking pot in every room in the house, and even having pipes set up with pot already in them in all rooms of the house. I'd imagine being able to leave the porn in the VCR just in case I wanted it in there for later.

It has been ten years since I've had a summer vacation.

This morning, the dawning of the day woke me up. I brought the dogs outside with me after making some tea, and together we sat on the balcony and watched the sun rise up from behind the mountains. After smoking a bowl and spending some time thinking about the gorgeous shirtless surfers I purposely gaged driving towards so I could be at the stop sign while they were crossing the street, I picked up my acoustic guitar and started strumming some tunes to compliment the chirping birds.

All this after spending the previous evening with Jason, who played the drums on my Madonna cover of “Burning Up”, doing our first run through of the songs we're recording to craft this great beacon with.

For at least the next three weeks the clock will never strike 3:30. During that time, everything I've discovered through all those summer vacations will come bubbling out, and I won't have to worry about putting it away for anybody.

It's funny to me, because sometimes it seems that all of this is just because I lost my job.

Mp3 of the Day: Sighs of Delight

I've been alone in this house for a week and a day, and finally have something to show for it:

The first mp3-of-the-day from the recording sessions here in Lakeside, California!

Click the polaroid to download SIGHS OF DELIGHT.

SIGHS OF DELIGHT only has a chorus in this take, the words of which are what's printed on the polaroid. The polaroid is a picture from the Unarian's parking lot in El Cajon, Ca.

That's Jason Nunez on the drums. Jason rocks.

In addition to mp3s from our recording sessions, I'll also post live tracks, acoustic demos and oddities from The Lakeside Project, my acid-rock band, 2000-2003.

More tomorrow!

Nothing Equals Nothing

This moring when I woke up, I decided to take the dogs for a walk to a long-standing El Cajon bakery, Howard's Bakery. I hadn't been in there since I was a kid, and was excited to feast my eyes on East County's freshest baked goods.

When I got there, however, I realized it was more of a glorified donut shop than a pasteria. My childhood vision of “bakery” was the ability to choose between glazed, chocolate, sprinkled and filled. They do make an amazing Boston Cream Pie, which is what I got.

On the way home, with two city-clueless dogs in tow, a white car with a heavy Latino guy driving pulled up beside me. There was another guy in the passenger seat, and a woman sleeping in the back seat. The guy in the passenger seat started going on about they just came from San Ysidro and were low on gas. I asked what it was they needed help with, and the guy whipped out an i-pod and said “I can sell you an i-pod.” Then they drove into a corner where I was supposed to meet them to buy this i-pod.

With a donut and a shady encounter under my belt before nine a.m., it's nice to know that all the Borders Books and Starbucks haven't totally wiped out the east county I know and love.

Back home and in the yard with my acoustic guitar and the birds chirping all around me, I attempted to learn another Madonna cover. Today's mp3 of the day is me learning (and singing two verses and a chorus of) Madonna's GONE, the closing number to her album, Music.

You can hear the dogs wrestling around in the grass and the bushes.

Click the polaroid to download the song.

In A UFO Over The Sea

"This basket we've made, a perfect parade, that marches to your name."

In honor of my sweetheart, who's arrived in San Diego for the weekend, an mp3 in his name.

Click on the picture to download "Come Into My Basket, We'll Float Across The Sky." This song usually has words (whenever I get to the line "Until you break my heart again..." Ben always says to me, "Is the YOU in this song ME?"), but in this rehearsal sketch, I opted for some awesome wah-guitar instead.

I Have Six Pills Of Ecstasy In My Pocket

Today's mp3 of the day, "Apologetic Bananas," is a grunge rock number from when I started writing songs around the age 15, armed with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins albums. You can hear the direct rip off influence. Click the polaroid to download the m-f'er.

Better than grunge-rock influences, however, is a story from a fellow reader that arrived in my inbox today. It's a story about drugs and sex written by a teenager in college coming down from both and questioning all sorts of ideas about life.

"Apologetic Bananas" comes from the exact same place.

With the kind permission of the anonymous author, here is that story:

I smell like menthol cigarettes, silicone, Armani cologne, and methamphetamine resin. Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California. It is 12:40 AM, and I am not going to sleep tonight. I am walking home to North Berkeley from Oakland. I think I needed the walk. The Scissor Sisters have reaffirmed themselves as my favorite band as I am listening to their first album on my iPod. We’re gonna take your mama out all night. I hope my bike is still there, where I left it on campus. I am 18 years old, and I have had sex with four different men in the past week. In the same week, I have been drunk three times, smoked more pot than most stoners do in a month, done 8 lines of coke, smoked opium, and now meth twice. I have six pills of ecstasy in my pocket, and soon I will start selling acid, shrooms, and opium. Plus coke if I can get it. Get it, get it. Despite all the weed, I’ve lost weight this week. No, I don’t have a scale, I just know. I made it to Dwight Way already. Am I writing slowly, or just walking really fast? I am neither cold nor hungry. You’re filthy, and I’m gorgeous. Or is it the other way around? You know what though? I’m so happy with my life. I live in the best city in the world. I have amazing friends. I love my mother so much, and she loves me. I wish I could talk to her right now, and tell her all this. She might freak out, but she’d understand. But, alas, she is asleep. She has to wake up at 5:15 AM tomorrow. Like four hours from now. I’ve stopped now, sitting on the front steps of Sproul Hall, the administration building at UC Berkeley. Second Scissor Sisters album is on. I’m safe now, but I was invincible before. No one would attack me, because I’m too much like them. I’m still tweaking pretty hard. So close to my house, only 15 more minutes. But I’m home. I’m enrolled in 16 units, and loving every moment of each class. At least I’m still smart. I got in here after all. I said “God Bless” to each homeless person I passed on this walk. I do think that it was the first time in my life I’ve said that in earnest. I thought I didn’t believe in God. At least not the Jewish one. Berkeley is so beautiful. If you’ve never been here, it’s worth a visit. I can’t even see the bay from here, just our beautiful campus. And Telegraph Avenue is a must in the shopping world. The sky is almost red, approaching the witching hour. My ex used belladonna. Twice actually. It makes up the real witches’ brew of legend. Makes you think you’re in a completely different world. The temperature is amazingly high considering the time of day and that it’s February. In the teens and snowing everywhere else in the country. From my origin of tonight – after my first meeting as a board member of a theater group, I took BART to Oakland to have the most amazing hook-up of my life. Met online of course. This man is beautiful, perfect. Nice face, perfectly shaped, toned, and muscular rock hard body. The biggest dick I’ve ever seen. I had sworn to never do meth in my life. My number one no-no. Now I’ll have to try PCP and heroin too. Heroin’s root is from the German word “heroisch” – heroic. I feel pretty damn heroic right now, but as the savior of the underworld. I gave a twenty dollar bill to a woman and her uncle sleeping on the street. I told her to use it only for good things, and she agreed. God only knows how old she was. Anywhere between 15 and 40. Scared. She was hesitant to let me approach, but I held out the bill and she accepted. Of course she thanked me vigorously. Sleeping tonight is not going to happen. But God knows I can focus on this drug. I guess that’s why people use it as speed to study for finals. I can do my readings that I’m behind on tonight. I should bring this to my new “foster mother.” Sine I no longer live with my mom, and although we talk a lot, I need a female to be my confidante. As a good Jewish boy, I’m required to love my mother unconditionally. And I do. Last semester’s mom went back to the south, so I somewhat replaced her. The new mom and I have the same sexual age limit: 42. Interesting number to choose I think. I’ve never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, or seen the movie, but I know the reference. I know pop culture really well. I am fascinated by how shallow life an be, and I hate Southern California, but sometimes I want to be a coke-using LA clubber mingling with Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Christina Aguilera. The new gay sexpot that the girls adore. Or I could even be a porn star. Maybe I’m delirious. Who knows? Not me. I also want to be a politician. That’s why this story has to remain anonymous. The sky is so bright. Even in dark paths I can see clearly. I’m still sitting at Sproul Hall. So many people walking by still, even though it’s almost 1:30 AM, I’ve stopped trying to think about how and why my life as it is came to be. It’s not worth the thought. I’m moving now, in the general direction of my home. I’m quite a schmooze too – very social, even without drugs. But really, the biggest goal in my life is to do research on drugs. As they are my passion, I want to learn more about them. I’ve read about how DMT is responsible for near-death experiences and alien abductions. I’ve done it, and I understand why. Salvia is a similar drug to DMT at least effect-wise. They open your mind. Salvia is used by Mazatec shamans in Oaxaca, Mexico. To study what they do and why. That’s what I want to do and know. Travel the world. I speak four languages. It’s feasible. Someday, I’ll find my prince, who will sweep me off my feet every time I see him. I’ll do every drug imaginable with him. He’ll be beautiful, just lie I know I am. The perfect life is attainable, it’s just different for each person. Or, even something else, variations are always possible. I wrote to my mother once, something like I want to get on a plane with you, and just go, and never return. We could see Grandma and my brother and sister occasionally. But it would just be me and her, until one of us dies. Life is so incredible. And so beautiful. Like a rose petal falling onto a mountain lake in the spring. And suddenly, it all makes sense. Life is individually designed for each of us. We can affect the course of our lives. But God loves us all equally, and wants us to be happy. One needn’t believe in God for this to happen. Oh yeah, I study anthropology. It all goes back t my confirmation speech in tenth grade, when I spoke about potential conflicts between science and religion. God did not create the world in seven days, but he did allow the universe to form,on its own will. Astronomy and evolution are still completely true. As are microbiology, chemistry, and physics. The world is just so perfect, in its own unique way. There is no other life in the universe, although it is infinite, we’re just being teased to think about the possibility. And it all makes sense. But enough about what I think. What do you think about all this? That’s what really matters.

This version of "Apologetic Bananas" was recorded live at the Velo Rouge Cafe in San Francisco last month.

All The Leaves Are Brown, And The Sky Is Gray

On a stormy winter's day in Boston, my dear friend Joe said to me, "I have a Mammas and the Pappas song stuck in my head."

" Is it 'California Dreaming' ?"

"No, it's the one that goes, 'all the leaves are brown...'"

"Yeah, keep singing it Joe..."

"'...Califo...' oh shit!"

In honor of the rain today (yes, even sunny-sandy-eggo gets rain), here's my California song, "California Baby." Click the polaroid to wow your ears.

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.

Happy Birthday, Lincoln!

There was no mp3-of-the-day yesterday in light of Lincoln's birthday. Ben and I ate birthday eclairs, I dropped him off at the airport for his return back to Berkeley, and then I sang "happy birthday" to Lincoln, as the honorary George Washington of LeStat's open mic night.

So today you're in for a real treat, with TWO mp3s-of-the-days. "California Baby" is below, and here on the posters of Hendrix, and what I was duped into thinking was James Dean, is another song from the time period that bore "Apologetic Bananas," "Horny Apple Pie." Apparently I had a fruit thing going on.

Hmmm.

The story behind "Horny Apple Pie" can be read in my post "Jet Fighter Helmet".

Happy V-Day!

Lonely heart or no, click the picture above to download a Valentine's song that will warm your heart, even if you're in Somerville, Massachusetts (where, as I write this, is an awesome 23F degrees!), the birthplace of Fairlee and Josephine.

And to my valentine:
I found a million ways
To say I love you endlessly
So let's write children's books
About the witch that lost her looks
She's only mean 'cause she forgot
Her youthful heart still beats inside her chest

Why This Project In Lakeside Is Different Than The Lakeside Project

It's a matter of opening up gates for me.

The Lakeside Project was my Boston band, 2000-2002. The whole idea behind the band was basically an F-off to my hometown, Lakeside, CA. With my arsenal of dreary and angry songs, I wanted the band to stand as some kind of Roger Waters type search for peace inside alienation and suffering, ala The Wall or Dark Side Of The Moon, where I could transcend the demons of growing up a cherub among the white trash. I needed it to prove to the people that wouldn't talk to me in high school, that I was worth talking to. Secretly, however, I knew I was really just trying to prove that to myself.

It's as if there was this giant gate I was trying to hold open, hoping that others would walk through, to find a slice of humanity that breaks the boundaries of our normal lives. The only problem was I didn't know how to guide people to this gate, and when I saw people flocking through other people's gates, it made me question the worth of trying so hard to keep it open. Like Sloth from The Goonies, trying to hold open a collapsing cave door with his back, I was crumbling in the wreckage of everything around me. Where Sloth found his inner strength and became the hero of the story, I stopped short and pulled the plug on the project, swearing off rock and roll for good.

One of my earliest childhood memories is from 1982. I was three. It was the year I saw Olivia Newton-John live on her Physical Tour. I don't remember much about the actual concert, I just remember seeing her name in huge letters on the Sports Arena marquee, and staring up in wonder. Ever since then, I have been fueled with nothing but the desire to create. By the time the Lakeside Project began, I had had a lifetime to dream it up, and used all of my favorite rock and roll stories as guidelines for how everything would work: U2's connection to their hometown, Pearl Jam's shunning of the spotlight, Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, and Nirvana's nirvana. I knew what songs we were going to do, I knew the names of the albums, and even how the tell-all interview with Kurt Loader would go.

The main reason the Lakeside Project imploded was because I tried to integrate all those premeditated ideas into something that was fundamentally unpremeditated. It was just like throwing a giant rock on your back and saying, “Hey guys, come check this out, look what I can do!”

So here I am. In Lakeside. Recording rock and roll.

The funny thing is that none of this was planned, but I'm here doing exactly what I've been wanting to forever. This time, however, I'm not using my back to hold this gate open.

It's been open the whole time. I found the key in 1982, and I walked right on through. Lakeside, and most people's youths shape people into believing that there is no gate, and that the peace you seek is somewhere other than where you are. I've spent the years since the Lakeside Project refocusing my sites to be able to see that I've already stepped through the gate, and it's beautiful here. All I have to do now is continue to honor this beauty, and keep working to make it the most beautiful thing imaginable. All I have is time, and with that, all that can come is more beauty, and the people who are looking for that beauty will find it. That's all.

So here's some beauty, in the form of a lost cherub trying to find his way back home: The Lakeside Project, “Bike Spokes pt 1.” Click on the polaroid to begin the journey.

The Final Weekend

Oh no.

The parents are coming home soon. This is my last weekend to turn everything up to eleven and make the devil-rock-n-roll hand gesture harder than I've ever done it before.

In preparation for all the rock still left to roll, let's chill out for a minute and listen to this cute little number, Exordia, recorded live at the Velo Rouge Cafe in San Francisco. Alec Chumbley (pictured) joins in on guitar, and Kate Ming (not pictured) joins in on accordion. Click the picture of Alec and I looking like a happy little couple to download the song.

Sorry, Alec. I'm taken.

I, Eye, Aye

Jason Nunez = drum god. Click on the polaroid to hear us running through an instrumental version of "I Corona" on Rattlesnake Mountain.

Honeycut

(I know I promised an mp3-per-day while I was here in Lakeside recording music. Today is Wednesday, and my previous mp3-of-the-day was on Saturday. Sunday, Monday and Tueday have all been one long day for me, putting in a couple last sessions, packing up all the gear, putting my parent’s house back together, getting the parents at the airport, and watching them resettle into American life. I have one more story/mp3 to give you guys after this one, and then it's back to Berkeley for me. Hopefully I can write it in less than a day. Today's mp3 is live from the Velo Rouge, and you can hear the espresso machine clinking in the background.)

“I didn't realize I was poor until I moved out of Lakeside.”

This sentence has been ringing in my head all week.

Soon after meeting Matthew at a coffee shop in the hip North Park community of San Diego, we discovered we shared a profound connection; having had the experience of growing up in Lakeside and narrowly escaping its trappings, but only after a lot of unnecessary drama.

We also shared another very profound connection. We shared the love of a man who touched many lives, a man known to fans of “Honeycut” as “my friend from Saturn,” and “Creekbomb Winger.” We both found our lives completely changed from knowing him. We both still find solace and enlightenment in the memories of his smile, and the warmth of his presence.

But we also discovered that even the brightest lights can still be captured by the darkness of Lakeside. The darkness is crystal meth. Since the age of 15, I've watched it take over the lives of almost every kid I knew growing up. I wish I could hear a story about someone I loved growing up and not hear the word “crystal” as the benchmark of what happened to them. I wish I could hear that my friend from Saturn, the one who showed me life's infinite possibilities, took a space ship on a 2001 style journey far far away from the exploding meth garages of East County and back to the beautiful place he came from.

Matthew shared his morsel about growing up poor as we drove through Lakeside, noticing the new array of orange stucco condos going up between all the trailer parks.

It was at this point I realized that my epiphany came from the opposite end of the spectrum:

I didn't realize I was upper class until I moved out of Lakeside.

Actually, I started to pick up the clues when I was 15 and my parents had the kitchen remodeled. My parents apparently used “kitchen remodeling time” as a time to also pick up a new washer and dryer, to go with the new counter top in a room 35 feet away, and in fact, completely detached from the house. My dear friend Jamie from down the street was over at my house, and she saw the old washer and dryer headed for the curb.

“Are you guys getting a new washer and dryer?”

“Yeah.”

“Did your old one break?”

She gave me a look of slight sadness and empathy, imagining herself having to carry the laundry down to the river with a washboard and some rocks if her family might suffer the same fate.

“No, they're just old.”

Her look of empathy quickly turned to one of confusion, and perhaps a little disgust.

“Your family buys NEW things just because your OLD things are OLD?”

Jamie's family was the kind of family that definitely held onto things until there was absolutely no way they could be used any longer, and even then, they'd still find a way to squeeze a little more life out of them. One of my favorite play places with Jamie was the discarded bathtub in the backyard with overgrown ivy all over it. We'd sit in it while eating picnics of butter sandwiches prepared by her mom.

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”?