California and other musings...

-I live in California. This is not really an amazing fact, but merely a fact in and of itself. California is a place, and it's where I happen to live. Having said that, I don't think about it much. And why would I? We all have lives and other more important matters to fret about, and where we happen to geographically be located normally falls pretty low on the daily thought scale (unless you happen to live in Somalia or Fallujah, for instance. I'm sure folks who live there think about what that means quite a bit). Anyways, where I live is a decent sized city of 500,000 people. However, it is surrounded by farmland and hills/mountains, so it's a surprisingly rural place given its size. Anyways, I sometimes forget that a mere 15 minute drive from my home is geography like this:

It's easy to forget something as beautiful as this is right outside your door. Literally. I had forgotten my hometown had this kind of geography...and it is easy to do. Sometimes we need to just walk outside our door, and put life on hold...if even for only a few hours. If we don't, views like this might as well be a 1,000,000 miles away. This brings me to another point: our drought. If you look at these pictures, you can see where the normal waterline is, and where we are currently at...and it's the end of the rainy season. Not good...at all. Still, it's not like the state sits next to trillions of gallons of water or anything. I mean, how handy would it be to border an ocean, right? If only somebody would invent some sort of handy-dandy process to extract the salt from seawater, perhaps our water issues could be solved. Clearly, that is but a fantasy scenario*

(* This is, of course, hyperbole. California needs to get real and line the coast with desalination plants. If the Middle East can put water slides and ski slopes in their malls located in the middle of the Sahara...courtesy of desalination plants... I would think the world's 7th biggest economy** could do the same and spare us from having to refrain from flushing our toilets or taking a "not more than" five minute shower. Just build a solar farm next to them to supply the power, and presto...it's even green and self sustaining. Naaaah...makes too much sense, and, until a corporation figures out how to charge us for sunlight and seawater, they won't be interested...which is why California needs to make this THE public works project of the 21st century. A water independent California would be an economic juggernaut unlike the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, such ambitions requires foresight and long term thinking/planning, something westerners, and specifically Americans, are typically quite poor at....)

(** California is the world's 7th largest economy. Suck it Texas and New York...outside your own mind, you're just not that important)

Other thoughts:

-why can't I get breakfast past 11am in most restaurants?  What's the issue, man?  For whatever reason, the restaurateurs of America have decided "Thou shalt NOT eat a pancake, bacon, and scrambled eggs after 11am!....no exceptions!!!"  Why?  Is there a time lock vault that locks up the eggs and bacon after 11am?  Is there a rotation of staff that occurs at 11am ON THE DOT that, while perfectly comfortable grilling up a hamburger and fries, have no concept of how to scramble a fucking egg?  "Scramble an egg?  What am I?  Houdini???"  Or, in most restaurants, is the staff with knowledge of all things breakfast summarily executed every morning at 11...which explains the high employee turnover at most restaurants.  Seriously.  What the hell?  On a weekend when I sleep in...or while on vacation....I don't want to be in a panic to get up early to make the "breakfast hour".  I want to enjoy myself at a leisurely pace, and, what I don't want, is a shrimp cocktail or lasagna with my morning cup of coffee.  I want biscuits and gravy.  French toast.  'Ya know?  A fucking FRITTATA. Not a roast chicken.  Who's with me on this?  "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!!!"  "Attica!  Attica!" etc.  Anyways, as you can see, this really irritates me.

-why is the world generally set up on a 8am-6pm schedule?  To take advantage of sunlight?  Is that the reason?  We're no longer an agrarian society.  I don't get up at dawn to milk cows in an unlit barn.  We live in a world of electric light.  We can have light whenever we want it.  It's glorious.  There's no need to chase the sun like an 18th century farmer anymore.  Let it go.  Nobody, and I mean, NOBODY, is at their best at 8am.  It takes a gallon of coffee and the stress of a commute to wake us up.  Study after study has indicated the early morning hours are not the time for peak human efficiency.  Furthermore, these same studies have shown that this is just about the WORST time to try and educate a child...so naturally our schools are set up on this inefficient and archaic time system.  Along with extending breakfast hours, we need to push back the work day to something like 10am to 8pm...seriously.  There needs to be a grassroots movement on this.  I'd do it, but I'm too exhausted from getting up so goddamn early (ha! A joke!).

-ok.  Not my best efforts here, but I rushed through it just to put something up.  I've been meaning to do it for a few weeks, but never seemed to get around to it.  So...ta da and all that.  Now, I'd write more, but I need to shower as I just finished a run a little while ago.  No, I don't enjoy running.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it sucks.  What I enjoy even less, however, is the couple of extra pounds from the holidays that have stubbornly set up camp in my midsection.  Amazing how such a fleeting amount of pleasure can result in such a protracted amount of misery (if that's not a constant analogy for pretty much all of life's experiences, I don't know what is).        

New Song (edited)

OK.  Here's the edited version of last song I recorded minus the sound effects (i.e. record needle scratch, siren, desert wind, etc).  This is just basically the straight forward song itself.  It's an odd amalgamation of influences of mine: The Charlatans and The Church (and maybe a little Radiohead with the some of the background guitar atmospherics).  Specifically, the Hammond organ is all Charlatans circa their Some Friendly album, and the guitar is a lot of The Church circa their Starfish album (again, with a light dusting of Radiohead).  Recorded with nothing but an old Mac, and a Fender Strat and P-Bass.  Mixed pretty well, so use headphones!  As always, an instrumental, as I cannot sing...at..all.

New Song

So, I like to fiddle around with music. Might as well put the old guitars to some sort of use. What I don't do is write lyrics. Not my thing. It doesn't come natural to me, and it's just not a strong suit of mine. So, I say that to explain this: since my music is all instrumentals, I tend to have a lot of visual imagery floating around in my head as I compose something. This one is no different. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As far as the song itself, it's a mishmash of a lot of bands/styles/genres I love. Specifically (in this instance): Ennio Morricone/The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; The Charlatans from their Some Friendly period; The Church from their Starfish album; U2's Unforgettable Fire; Catherine Wheel's Ferment album; and even a little Depeche Mode and Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique in the intro and outro. So, back to the song: I thought of it as a soundtrack to a highly stylized movie from the late 60s, early 70s (not the music itself, just the movies imagery...although the hammond organ in the song is very retro sounding and that was intentional). The kind of movie Lee Marvin would have made or maybe George Clooney when he wants to be grittier. Here's the plot in a nutshell and how the song corresponds with the story (at least, in my head):

-The Lee Marvin/George Clooney character is a "fixer" for LA mobsters. He's very good at what he does, and supremely confident in his abilities. But, he's also grown tired, weary, bitter, and cynical...and is thinking of getting out and "retiring". As he sits alone in a dark downtown bar, he gets a phone call for a job. As he prepares for the job, and goes about doing what he does to complete it (let your mind wander as to what it might be), that's the first part of the song. It's the intro (prepping and driving to the scene), and the verse (doing the job, and doing it well). However, it dawns on the fixer something isn't right, and his "bosses" have set him up to take a hard fall. That's the short bridge after the verse...when it occurs to him he's in deep trouble and been deceived and double-crossed. The second part (or chorus, although it only occurs once), is his flight out of the city with danger close on his heels. He's heading to the desert where an old flame of his lives. She's the only person he can trust, and she's somebody he's never told anybody about in order to keep her out of harms way from his seedy life. He's had years of regret for walking away from the relationship years prior, as she was easily the best thing he had in his life. But, being who he was, he felt she was better off without him...but he's never gotten over the regret. The repeat of the bridge is their meeting in the desert, and her hiding him out until he can figure out an angle to clear his name from the incident. She agrees to go back to help him if he promises to leave the city and be with her (she still holds a candle for him too). He agrees. The repeat of the verse is them both going back to LA, and the fixer getting his revenge and the bosses getting their just desserts. The ending bridge is the fixer and the woman driving back out to the desert and never looking back.

Now, a movie like this needs a highly stylized poster, which i would imagine would look something like these:

Anyways, that's my musical process and some insight into my brain. I know...nerd alert. Oh, and the sound of the record skipping at the intro and outro was just an homage to the Beastie Boys Pauls Boutique album. I had fun making the recording sound like it was a record where the needle would get stuck and you had to bump it to get it going again, and then hastily dragged the needle over the groove at the end putting it away. The siren/car chase at the beginning was my idea of the "listener" of the record listening to another track on the record (say, the "chase scene of the fixer getting out of LA"), and the needle got stuck, so they drug the needle over to the next track, this song. Then song ends as it's the last track, so the listener drags the needle a bit as they put the spindle back in its cradle. No real purpose other than my own entertainment.

PS:
This song was a pain in the ass to mix and master. Different sets of headphones/earbuds would produce wildly different results, so I kind of had to make a compromise where it didn't sound perfect on any of them, but decent on all of them.

Hipsters, whiskey, desert boots, Keira Knightley, Snoop Dogg, yachts, Cristal, Kardashians, Black Friday and lumbersexuals

OK hipsters. I've tolerated your idiotic love of ridiculous beards and "ironic" mustaches, and bands that feature Appalachian musical instruments as a lead melodic device. Fine. Have at it you pathetic numbskulls. I've even forced myself to be OK with your currently having ruined the most amazing piece of footwear ever invented, the Clarks desert boot (I've been wearing them since I was a teenager. I wear them now. In fact, I will probably be buried in a pair. I've been wearing them for over 25 years.  I'm in it for the long haul. I didn't wear them all those years ago because others thought they were cool, I wore them because I THOUGHT they were cool. You didn't see flannel clad d-bags in KFC commercials wearing them. Know how I discovered them? I saw a guy wearing them on an old Yardbirds album cover from the 60's and decided I liked them. It then took forever to find a pair in Fresno because corporate America wasn't forcing them down our throats because they were trying to appeal to that 18-25 demo. Now? Every 22 year old in skinny jeans and a waxed handlebar mustache is wearing a pair. But that's fine. Soon, they will fall out of fashion, and you guys will be on to something else....maybe elf shoes with the little jingle bell on the curled toe? Anyways...I'll have my desert boots back is all that matters). But what I cannot abide is you twats having driven the price of whiskey, specifically bourbon, through the stratosphere. IT'S RIDICULOUS. I'm sure you fixie riding, ironic dive bar attending idiots think it's beyond cool you're enjoying a beverage your granddaddy drank. Thing is, I don't think you even like it. I can see your little pinched faces as you drink it knowing deep down inside you'd rather be drinking a Smirnoff Ice or something. Anyways, your strict adherence to drinking something "retro" and "ironic" has driven the price of your basic, everyday working man whiskies to $25-30 a bottle. A bottle of Makers Mark used to run $19.99. Wild Turkey 101 could be had for less than that. Now? Forget it. And, a higher end item like a Van Winkle, while not cheap, could at least be found on the shelf at your local specialty liquor store. Now? They're sold out pre-release. WTF?????? Stop ruining everything good in life with your slavish devotion to trend. It's sickening, and destroying it for those of us who appreciate things for their intrinsic pleasures, not because all your friends say it's cool. I come from a long line of brown liquor drinkers (some, a little TOO fond of the stuff) with southern/Scots-Irish DNA, which is to say I come by my enjoyment of a bottle of Elmer T. Lee honestly. Could you dweebs do me a favor and latch on to something else? Gin? Ooooh....how about rum??? There's an unexplored beverage that is just now starting to sprout artisanal distillers, plus pirates LOVED IT. And how cool are pirates, am I right??? They even liked beards too! Just like you!!!! Oh...eye patches! You could bring back eye patches too!!! The possibilities are endless! So, let's get on it hipsters! Let's start the rum revolution and leave that bourbon behind!!!!!!! (and Scotch and Irish too...). Do it for the children....ha. Kidding. Do it for me you bastards.
*
Headline: "Keira Knightley poses topless to make statement about body image and retouched photos."

Saw the photos, and here's what that unspoken photographic statement of Keira's essentially said (I'm translating for you folks who don't speak the celebrese language long ago created by ancient tribes of Hollywood publicists): "Hey everybody! Look at me! I'm young, rich, white, pretty and skinny! Woo hoo! Suck it, losers!!! Ha ha ha ha ha! Worship me you pathetic fucks!!!!!!!! Gwab morg goff blergh fwomp!!!! (sound of Keira morphing into a demon with camera flash-bulbs for eyes)

That Keira Knightley is one daring woman. To have her professionally made-up, lighted, costumed, and posed visage selectively edited for the best shots out of dozens (if not hundreds) of photos thrown out there into the public domain is an act of heroism, nay, BRAVERY, that really makes Joan of Arc look like a self aggrandizing attention whore by comparison. What we really need to ask ourselves is this...Keira Knightley: great woman? Or greatest woman? I know...I'm torn too...btw, kinda flat chested.  Just sayin'...Zing! See what I did there? Ha ha ha...it's like I don't get it! Right??? (seriously though, smallish boobs is the point I'm trying to get across here)
*
Oh, and apparently THIS happened in the UK.  So, a maniac in Wales murders a woman, then eats her face, and then dies after being Tasered by police (for those of you keeping score at home, this is also known as the methamphetamine trifecta). I had no idea the Welsh were such a rowdy lot.
*
Just got an email inquiring if I'd like to rent a private jet. Evidently, a marketing firm has identified me as a player (pronounced "play-ah"). I figure it's only a matter of time before subscription opportunities to the Cristal bottle of the month club come rolling in, and, mixed in my mailbox with the Bed, Bath and Beyond flyers, I start getting service coupons offering to get the oil changed on my Bentley for 15% off.

This was followed by another email, that, no joke,  was an offer for me to rent a yacht. I figure the offers to set me up with a Kardashian must be just right around the corner. The yacht email:

Note: offer states yachts are "friendly, accommodating, and well run." Needless to say, these proclamations are a sure sign of quality, as most of us are just plain sick and tired of the unfriendly, un-accomodating, and highly disorganized floating luxury deathtraps we've become accustomed to. Thank god. Then again, the fact my last yacht crew was a bunch of Somali's should have been the first clue I had erred in judgment with my choice in yacht rentals.

#‎baller‬

*

Here's an article about "Lumbersexuals".  The article refers to them as "rugged hipsters."
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/11/lumbersexual-trend-thrusts-rugged-hipsters-into-mens-fashion-spotlight.html

Ahem. "Rugged hipsters"? I don't know where to even begin...but fear not, for begin, I shall. Rugged is to hipster as dental hygiene is to meth addict. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but probably something that could only exist for a millionth of a second in a highly controlled environment at Lawrence Livermore Labs...like an isotope of element 115 (aka ununpentium...look it up...nerd humor). Anyways, can we just either a) make it stop with the bearded buffoon brigade (the bbb's) and their many lame ass (lame assed?) iterations (monocle man, handlebar mustache man, fixie man, craft beer man, insanely expensive limited release whiskey man, bacon man, etc) and just round them up and force them to live electrically fenced inside an elitist, green, micro-farming, pet friendly, GMO free, all natural deodorant, flannel lined gulag, and just call it New Portland? They'd be happy to live there, never notice they were imprisoned, and can all bore each other to death with hysterically un-funny, droll tales full of whimsy of their times in grad school when they grew their own hops for their home brew they later shared with their neighbors who didn't get the joke of the hand drawn label of a pirate they put on their bottle and called it PBR (pee bee arrrrrrrrrrrrr!), or, b) have them all shipped to Syria, and let Darwinism work its magic. I know. Option "b" sounds a little risky, because it could end up with wave after wave of jihadists coming back to our shores armed with skinny jean IED's, hemp grenades, IPA launchers, and ironic musical death beams blasting out Journey (even though these jihadists will secretly cringe a little with self doubt because they're not sure everybody GET'S IT, and they almost feel the need to start babbling on about their love of Leonard Cohen to reestablish their hipster, jihadist cred. This is when they will be most vulnerable, and when we rush in and cut up their Visa card that is paid off monthly by their parents who co-signed for them, thus rendering them defenseless and soon kicked out of their apartments in Brooklyn for overdue back-rent, and now at our mercy) from the speakers of the most ironic of hipster cars: the 1969 Citroen DS..............
I'm not going to lie, I seem to have gone off on a foaming at the mouth tangent, and I totally forgot what my point was...but I think it has something to do with my unresolved anger at 23 year olds who just 2 years ago were drinking Bud Light Lime-A-Rita's and are now pre-ordering by the case the 2014 release of 18 year old Sazerac Rye (for example) to the point where I cannot get my hands on a bottle even through special order. I also suspect they don't even like it, and take it home and mix it with Dr. Pepper. Hopefully, someday soon, they'll go back to secretly drinking their girlfriends Cosmo's and doing Jåger bombs, and come out of the closet for their love of all things Bon Jovi, and not Bon Iver.
*
By the way, When Snoop Dogg uses words like "shizzle", "nizzle", and "izzle kizzle", everybody thinks he's using slang, or some sort of self created street lingo. Personally, I just think he's quoting from the lesser known books of Dr. Seuss.
*
There's been a dangerous lack of celebrity opinions and comments about the recent events that have occurred this week, unbelievably, right before Thanksgiving. This is a time when Americans are supposed to be coming together, giving thanks and celebrating our shared values, and not fighting amongst ourselves.  I feel so lost. How am I supposed to know how to feel, and how to think, and what to think, if a celebrity won't tell me what's appropriate? Come you egomaniacal, narcissistic, vapid and vain visages of the screen big and small...to the Twitterverse and spill it! I cannot wait to hear how this has affected you, nay, haunted you, as you sip a $300 dollar Pinot in your Malibu fortress and contemplate what's right and just for the hoi polloi. Do it! Stop staring at the screen and just hit send! I breathlessly await, trembling with anticipation, all atingle, for you to free me from my mental vapor lock, not knowing how to process all this stimuli with my little, underdeveloped, non-red carpet brain. Your sage words learned from a rich and diverse, deeply salt of the earth life, full of meaningful experience gained through $2000 prostitutes and cocaine fueled parties, will fill my head with wonder and new understanding of my existence as it relates to my fellow man and woman, and I will finally, blissfully know, through your wisdom.......................whether these post-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales are worth the hassle or not.

Thoughts, musings, and the like...

I have just now decided as I sit here on my sofa watching the Giants lose on a Friday night that a better name for funnel cake would be "the stringy donut". Furthermore, in order to be licensed to make stringy donuts, one would have to show to a govt. certified pastry licensing board a complete and utter inability to competently make "an actual donut". Only after "successfully failing" in making "an actual donut" will you be officially licensed to make the dunce of the donut world: the stringy donut. Ideally, children will be spotted at an early age for their incompetence with yeast based pastries, and steered into this vocation at a young age to ensure that carnivals and fairs will have a steady and trained labor force for continual and uninterrupted stringy donut production. A crippling meth addiction is preferred, but not required, for those that assist in operating the deep fryer machinery.

                                         A stringy donut:

                                         An actual donut:

Assistant deep fryer operator:

Also, you know how Prince changed his name to a symbol? I wonder if you could change your name to a sound...like an explosion or something? Then if somebody asked your name, you would make a specific explosion sound (imagine mimicking an obnoxious explosion sound). If they demanded you write down your name for some legal purpose, you just drew the waveform for the sound...so your signature would look like this (see below). It's really too bad I don't have any newborns to try this social experiment out on, as I think I could be on to the next big thing here...

My fictional newborn's name and eventual signature:

As you can see here, my Friday nights are jampacked with social interaction and high intrigue. 

Caffeine Dealers

So I remember reading this a while back:

"Did you know that Starbucks coffee can have twice as much caffeine as other brands of "to go" coffee?"

Now picture the look on a dogs face when they hear a high pitched sound.  Something like this:

THAT was the look on my face when I read that...because I was perplexed as to what the point was to that question/declaration (btw, my autocorrect originally had the words "point was" as "pony waste" and I almost left it like that, because it struck me as funny). To me, that statement is akin to informing somebody that heroin has an intoxicating effect. Um...yeah. Exactly. It's kind of the reason I go there (for the coffee/caffeine, that is...not heroin. Although, based on their continual menu expansion, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that's offered as well.  "I'll have a venti China white, please."
"Of course, sir! That will be $1,500 and your dignity. Would you like that with whipped cream? Or caramel? Or just the usual heated over a dirty spoon?")

Anyways, Starbucks knows what people like me need in the morning, and that is a hot cup of oooomph, preferably a venti, and not some black, benign liquid masquerading as the real deal.  If something is going to give me less than minty breath, and the need to urinate every three minutes, it had better put a bounce in my step, 'ya know?  So snap to it alternative coffee peddlers!  If you want to compete with The 'Bux, you'd better tweak (get it??????  A PUN!!!) that formula to a proper teeth grinder of a brew and then maybe, just maybe, some of those early morning, bleary eyed, disposable income zombies (like me) who have no desire to be up at that ungodly hour except to please The Man and Get Paid, might stumble into your roasted bean joint for a hot cup of giddy-up to get their day started.   

The Golden Years

Person: So, when you eventually retire, what are you going to do?
Me: Nothing.
Person: You don't mean that...who could do nothing for years on end?
Me: You don't know me very well, do you?

My Retirement Plan