20
Jan
12

“A tree never hits an automobile except in self defence.” Proverb

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Wow. My clutch burned out a few days ago. After getting it replaced it’s like driving a new car! Based on how it feels now, I guess there has been a problem with it since I bought it. Pretty crazy. A year or two ago I had a chance to drive a base model Civic and noticed the clutch was waaaay cleaner/easier to push. My last stick shift car was a 92 Camaro so I was pretty used to “rock crusher” clutches. My Civic is a sport model so I figured that there was a more intensive clutch to handle it.

Guess I was wrong.

Either way, it’s nice to not have to worry about it now. Was also lucky enough to have noticed it early enough that I wasn’t stranded anywhere.

It’s interesting that the mechanic noted “disintigrated” on the diagnosis.

18
Jan
12

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. ” Willy Wonka

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I have to say, as I mercilessly plug a burlesque show, that the marketing scheme cooked up by vivadallasburlesque is genius. Ingenious even.

Their upcoming show is a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme – here’s the flyer:

The thing that REALLY impressed me is that they’re running a “Golden Ticket” marketing campaign.  In an era where most people use Facebook as a their sole source of advertising, the addition of the “hunt” element was really a cool idea. I almost wanted to feign sickness and start driving around town looking for these tickets. I know where a few of them are, but I bet I can’t get there before someone else does. I’ll try this weekend maybe. Frequent the places the tickets are known to be….spend some cash at these places so they know that this was effective marketing….

Seriously, how much more fun could this be?

17
Jan
12

“A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.” Frank Lloyd Wright

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My doctor is an awsome dude.  I’m a pretty typical guy in that I usually wait until the last possible minute to seek medical attention. In 2007 or 2008, after being told by a health examiner (for life insurance) that my blood pressure was high, I found my doctor.

Yes, it was a random selection, chosen mostly by proximity to my house, but right before I went in, I made a decision. I made the decision that it was time to own up – for better or worse – that I had no idea what kind of shape I was in. I decided to be completely up front with my new doctor, that I was turning a new leaf and wanted to be open and transparent. I had nothing to lose, it was only my health right?

When I first went in, the nurse said, “Oh, your Doctor loves to do blood tests.”  I thought, “GREAT!” Sure enough, even he said that he performed a lot of blood tests – just to be sure.

Since then, I’ve continued to be open and honest with him, and my office visits are mercifully short because I try and get as much info out as possible, making it a one stop shop. He’s always willing to take the time to discuss anything I bring up.  He’s always in a great mood, and we laugh and joke while he goes about the business of making sure I’m a healthy dude.

Over the last year or so, I’ve put the weight I’d lost back on. In talking to my doctor, I’m approximately thirty pounds overweight. Thirty pounds! That’s pretty amazing. I felt I was about fifteen above where I should be, but this was a reality check.

Pretty crazy.

In other news, I rode the Dallas DART for the first time, and figured out that my camera has a panoramic function. Check it:

 

12
Jan
12

“It sounds all very sort of technical, but in fact it was very much a kind of bootlace affair. I mean, in the Abbey Road in those days was a fairly primitive place by today’s standards.” George Martin

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The intro to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” came onto the radio on my way home.

I never remember the song until the verse comes in.

The intro makes chills come up my spine – for the sole reason that the first time I heard it I was in a music class in New Zealand. It was probably the first week of being in a new all-boys school, and I was in a music class taught by a hippy-dippy woman who wanted us to absorb the wonderment of the lyrics. She played it over and over and over again.

I hadn’t been there long enough to pick up their accents, so she kept asking me questions which terrified me.

Every time I hear that song it takes me back to the drafty classroom next to the terraces.

This is a pretty nice picture. Good shot. Obviously you can see the terraces (which were lots of fun to get into fights on and then tumble down the sides of). However, you can’t see the tennis courts just below the music room, but you can see the creepy grounds-caretaker’s house on the left in white, then the creepy cemetery up at the top of the picture. The jogging class would typically end by running through the cemetery (which paradoxically we were strictly forbidden to enter) back onto school grounds.

Good times.

04
Jan
12

“Sometimes, I even freak myself out!” – Dimebag Darrell

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I don’t know about you, but my new year has been pretty cool so far.

So far I’ve gotten a lot done in the garage and my music room. Strapped on a guitar here and there and even fired up an old distortion pedal that I kind of like now.

I’m trying to make an effort not to pay so much attention to my blog stats – although I can usually tell when some guitar forum posts a link to the guitar columns.

Unusually enough, I get quite a bit of traffic for searches on Edgar Oliver. You know, the “straaightjacket” guy from that show Oddities (and numerous other projects as his IMDB attests)

In honor of Edgar, I present:

 

“Is that a straaaaight jacket?” – Edgar Oliver

30
Dec
11

“Money only pays the bills. Rockabilly saves souls” Darrel Higham

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It’s a barren radio wasteland. Trying to keep my ipod charged and in the car was a pain, and it didn’t help that I read a book about sampling rates and decided that my imusic was too muddy. I should have known better.

Commuting to work without my personal music stash is just too torturous.

My annual rebellion from TV and internet is also hitting me hard and I’m eyeing my music room and garage for what I’m willing to throw away to make it more condusive to practicing.

Oddly enough I played one of my oldest guitars this morning. It wasn’t as stiff playing as I remember it, but it was close. It’s unfortunate because it’s my only single coil equipped guitar. I have more or less two standing invitations to buy if I ever wanted to sell it. I’m going to have to take it to a tech to suss it out, but right now I think the neck angle is out just enough to be lengthening the scale slightly – making it more of an effort to play. Kind of a bummer.

2011 is almost done. Raising a glass to the year that brought me some steady employment that hasn’t (yet) driven me crazy. Toasting the upcoming year, with good wishes to all.

15
Dec
11

“You’re suffering from hardening of the orthodoxies.” ~ Camden Benares

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Today my girlfriend inadvertently offended some white people. Well, white person anyway.  In a very small, limited way I can understand where they were coming from. (This with a guess that they’ve never seen “Stuff white people like” either). She posted the below picture on Facebook and someone took offense.  To me the picture seems as any other ha-ha internet picture does. Good for a chuckle…..then it’s time to move on.

Despite the fact that I think only a small percentage of anything you find on the internet should be taken seriously, I forget sometimes how sensitive people are to the dumbest stuff.  A good example would be this really cool patch that I got for one of my jackets:

What’s not to love, right? As someone who loves religion as pop-art and lowbrow culture (neither of which I take too seriously), I was quickly reminded that I live in the South. The South where some people are fanatically religious and could cause me verifiable harm. Some people take that religion stuff really REALLY seriously.

I’ve had way less issues with people than I used to. I used to wear my priest collar out in public just for the hell of it, and I think people were generally too shocked to beat the crap out of me.

I think sometimes shock value is good. Sometimes it initiates change. Obviously my girlfriend won’t be posting any Nutella pics referencing white people, but that change has debatable value.  Although, since I’m white could I have.posted the picture without recrimination? What’s the impact there? Can I go hang out at IKEA and lure white people into a van with Nutella? (Did I just define IKEA as whitebread? Of course not, everyone shops there.)

One of man’s most admirable traits is the ability to laugh at one’s self.

Too bad people forget to do that often.

06
Dec
11

“A true initiation never ends.” Robert Anton Wilson

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In pre-internet times, reading books was my preferred way to gather subversive and entertainingly educational information. After my friend Brian turned me onto Robert Anton Wilson, I first went through all the referenced authors in the Illuminatus series. After that, Loompanics Unlimited was a great source for dark materials. All of my John Waters books as well as my Anarchist Cookbook came from there.

One of the books that I got from there was the Principia Discordia which I took quite a shine to. I’m an athiest, but if pressed, I will admit to being athiest-discordian. However, one of the problems that I always had even with “practicing” Discordians was their over-reliance on the source material. To me, the tome was intended as a starting point. Unfortunately there are not a tremendous amount of people inventive enough to elaborate on the existing work. Indeed, I started my own cabal briefly, the Theodore Geisel cabal, and sent out random musings via (snail) mail and initiated people that declared they were interested. I tried to expand upon the mythology and think I did okay….all things considered.  I saw something that reminded me of all this so I need to dig out some of that stuff again.

Recommended reading: Zen without Zen Masters by Camden Benares.

04
Dec
11

“He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.” Persian Proverb

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“Cha-na-na-na-na-na-na-knees! Knees! In the jungle….”, she sings.
“Wait”, she says. “How come I know this song?”
“Probably because you’ve heard it one million times playing Guitar Hero”.

Guilty as charged. Guns ‘n Roses “Appetite for Destruction”  has been rotating in and out of my CD player in my car.  It started at the last “Heavy Metal Burlesque” show that I went to – the sponsor had hired a GnR tribute band to play. The dude that was playing “Slash” didn’t impress me much, but that was because his Les Paul kept pulling out of tune. But it reminded me of all the songs off Appetite that I loved. I sang along to a bunch of them and couldn’t believe that I remembered the words. Stopped at Forever Young and scored a used copy.
Initially, I didn’t warm to GnR until right around the end of high school – around 1991.  In passing, we would see the video for “Paradise City” when waiting for the Metallica video “One”  (somewhere around 1989). GnR initally struck me as kind of a hair metal band so at the time I was pretty non-plussed. Looking back, we also didn’t think much about the instability of the guys in GnR. Just when you thought they SHOULD be releasing an album or something – they just didn’t. There was a LONG stretch of them releasing nothing until that double album set came out (which I only bought one of – and I can’t remember why). At that time, I wanted my music to be harder/heavier

 on AM radio! Rawk!
It wasn’t until a few of us drove down to Galveston with Ty’s crappy boom-box sporting a (cassette) copy of Appetite did I really start to dig the album. I have to say, it still really holds together and stands the test of time (for me anyway). Whenever I listen to it, the reckless-energy vibe still is there for me.
As a guitar player I’ve never been a huge Slash fan, although his playing on Appetite (to me) is a great exercise in judicious Wah usage. When I got bored at lunch, I popped over and picked up his autobiography. There were only two things that really surprised me. One is that he got a pacemaker at 34. (After continually having heart attacks onstage!). The other that shocked me was that Slash drove a Honda CRX. Seriously? A CRX? I was in an accident (as passenger) in one of those. I can’t imagine a less masculine car for a guitar-guy like Slash to be driving. I mean sure, it was black-on-black, but c’mon…..a CRX?  Heroin usage? Blah, blah, whatever. Expected. That CRX thing blew me away though.
Listening to Appetite now, I have to agree with Slash’s assesment that Stephen Adler was essential to that album’s success. No matter how much you dog him for whatever else he’s done, his drumming is really an essential part of that album.
I haven’t gotten into GnR live stuff yet – their Youtube stuff is not really doing it for me.  If you see me walking around with a top hat on, you’ll know I’ve lost it.

02
Dec
11

“The Devil was sick – the Devil a monk would be, The Devil was well the devil a monk was he” Francois Rabelais

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For some reason I really dig this note from Thelonious Monk (Dig?). Since I typically hate stealing an image and not giving credit *cough*flickr*cough*, It was linked on one of those social sites from here (which appears to be a different social media site, but it’s Teller).

As a musician, I can appreciate it but if you take a step back (metaphysically) it can apply anywhere.

** I have also add that my father liked Monk, so I’m going to be listening to some today **

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