TWILIGHT FURNITURE

So we’re back from our Vacation with my family.  We went to the wonderful St. George Island up in the “Big Bend” area of Florida or just across the Apalachicola Bay.  In the above you’ll see “The Cut” in the foreground.  For anyone keeping up with my picture taking on FB, these were the rocks where my Dad and I were fishing.  I have to say that the whole trip was a pretty mind blowing experience.  I think Stacey and I needed a recharge more than even WE thought, hahaha!  It was amazing to walk on the beach in the moonlight (the moon was basically full while we were there so it was pretty spectacular) and let our little Bruce Hornsby play in the surf.  It was great to see my family and hand out with my cousin Teresa who I hadn’t seen in YEARS!  I had my first raw oyster experience…AMAZING!  And we got to see Apalachicola which is now one of my favorite gulf towns.  Fresh seafood was eaten by the ton and fun was had by all!  

Now that we’re back the inspiration of Spring Break is bleeding over into the “everyday” parts of our lives.  This is what I love about a recharge.  It makes you take on adventures and check out new things.  We went to a new Asian market and stocked up on new items and ingredients for food making and we found 2 new places to eat, an Asian bakery and a Caribbean restaurant, both of which were amazing!!

 In a couple more days we’ll be back to work, Stacey finishing up the semester and I starting my first week as a full-time manager (I was promoted just before we left).  Sure the stresses will return and they’ll make it WAY too easy to just wanna sit around and not DO anything but I hope that after this recharge that I’ll feel more like getting out and about and exploring this still “new” city/state and finding a bunch more fun places to explore!!!

Mission of Burma.  Heard these guys on the way home from work today.  It reminded me of how much I love music.  It reminded me of that spirit that music, when truly free of pursuits other than purely commercial success, has to change your mood in an instant.  I went from being all hum-drum and “after work-y” to inspired and energized.  The windows came down in the car.  The volume went up on the radio.  It was a fun moment.  It was preceded by The Working Hour by Tears for Fears and followed by Drown by Smashing Pumpkins.  A mighty triumvirate.  I came home and instantly turned on the newly re-tubed amp and started working on a couple of things I’ve been cooking up musically…I want to get onstage and share them soon.  I want/need to share the creative moment with others…that’s when it’s most important and powerful, for me at least.  Sure, making a record of and on your own would be fun and fine but there’s nothing like hearing what people in a room together can pull out of even the most mundane idea.  It’s rather breathtaking, actually.  I wanna feel that again.  To hear the pieces fall into place.  To see the collective smile on the faces of the group of folks doing the creating…so much fun.

yep.

Owls mean BUSINESS!!  I mean seriously, look at that bird…he will eat your eyes, liver, stomach and nose cartilage just to say “Told you I could eat all that stuff.”  Lesson, don’t fuck with Owls.

This pic comes from a CNN story on how the Owl on the right has been interbreeding, killing and in pretty much every way, making life miserable for the Owl on the left…geez!  They even hate EACH OTHER!!!

The picture above is of a man named Joey Baron.  He is one of the all-time greats of drumming, called the “most melodic” drummer in the world by some and one of my all-time drumming heroes/inspirations.  If you get a chance listen to ANYTHING this man has played on and your life will be better for it.  

I posted this pic because I had one of those IT moments today whilst doing some maintenance work on my drums.  I realized (all over again) how much joy playing the drums brings me.  I’m always reminded of how much joy can be had at making music when I see a picture of Joey Baron playing music.  He is seemingly always grinning from ear to ear.  I understand that feeling.  I lived that feeling for a time.  Somewhere along the way I lost that feeling.  The idea of having to keep up with this thing that i loved so much like it was a 9-5 job had something to do with it.  The situation I was in at the time also had something to do with it.  But there was a time when I could remember nothing making me happier than getting into a dank, dusty storage shed (whose hallways always seemed to smell like pee?!) and work out some new song or new arrangement with friends.  It made us feel alive.  It brought us infinitely closer together as people because we understood that we were sharing something much bigger than our individual selves.  To see the work come to fruition was an incredible thing.  To take it from smelly room to tiny stage was another triumph, not caring if it was too loud or too long or too short.  Just trying to get to that place…affectionately referred to as “The Ether”.  Getting there was the goal.  That place where we didn’t have to think anymore but just DO it.  And react to whatever the others were bringing to the mix on a particular night.  I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage with some EXTREMELY talented people.  People who I will never be worthy of having played with.  In each of those settings I feel that we achieved arriving in “The Ether” drinking in the fumes and floating around for awhile just enjoying it.

In short, it’s time to do that again.  It’s time to feel that way.  It’s time to create.  It’s time to grin from ear to ear about what’s going on.  I go tonight to play with some new friends who I feel also wanna get to that place…It’s been far too long.

Dear Rick Santorum,

Please stop using your faith as a weapon.  This country needs less divisiveness and more unity.  You sir, by making your broad generalities about “Faith, Family and Freedom”  and what those mean to the country at large, are making things worse.  You only choose to box into this small worldview that you have those things which you approve of frankly, I think, because you’re scared.  I think you’re scared of what a world in which the very Lilly-white world that you and so many others like you have tried so hard to construct will look like if some of these “radical” ideals take hold.  Of course those “radical” ideals come down to quite basic freedoms but you’d rather ignore that fact in favor of “Freedom” as you and only you see it.  Sir, you can’t even disavow such ignorant and sexist comments such as those made by Mr. Friess (nerd alert: is he the REAL Mr. Freeze!?!) in interviews, how am I to believe that you would have the back bone to stand up for what Americans truly want/believe in?  

In all fairness to you, Mr. Santorum, your main opponent isn’t much better.  He’s wishy washy on his views, he’s too far into the wealthiest tax bracket on the PLANET to EVER understand what it’s like to struggle to make a bill payment every month in our current economic situation and he seems, to me at least, less like a robot and more like a flippant, arrogant asshole.  No, I understand all too well that you must fight the fight put before you, sir.  I understand that you weren’t ever “supposed” to be in the fight for the nomination.  I get it, no really, I do.  But lately and with ever increasing vitriol, you’re ideological assault on social issues in this country has gotten out of hand.  This “freedom” you speak so loftily of, seems more like a large box of things you don’t agree with the citizens of this country being able to do rather than a large box of things to ENJOY.  Freedom to you, it seems, means that we ALL have to put our right hand on a Bible and swear our allegiance to ideals/morals that have been created throughout the centuries by MEN just like you.  

These are scary times in the USA, Mr. Santorum.  Contrary to popular belief, we don’t need to be scared by anything else.  If you wanna lead the country, then DO IT.  Leave the scared “they’re taking away your freedom speech” out of it…just last night I read that you said this of our current President:

“It is imposing his ideology on a group of people expressing their theology - their moral code - and saying government will force you to do what your faith says is gravely wrong.”

My question to you, sir, is how is what you’re doing ANY different?  You seek to impose your own view of what Christianity should be, look like and talk like on a country that is saying time and again that it doesn’t necessarily think the same as you.  So far ALL you have shown this citizen is that the only “cultural war” (your words) that is looming is the one that you’ll start if/when you become President.  It seems to me that, much like your Tea Party brothers and sisters in congress, that you are MUCH more concerned with changing the SOCIAL structure of this country so that YOUR way of thinking will always be protected and less about fixing the things that are actually broken in this country.  Can you and your fellow Republicans/Tea Partiers put down the social boxing gloves and get to work on making things better??

Lastly, I’d like to say I’m not naive.  I know that you are a part of a bigger machine that’s at work here.  I know that you and every other politician on Earth are salesman.  You are salesman who see it as  your job to re-package our “freedom” and sell it back to us at cut rates with less benefits and less actual “Freedom” (see what I did there?!)than we had in the beginning.   As such I have little faith in ANY of you, current President included.  There have been some seriously scary things happen on this President’s watch.  We’re currently waging war in new terrifying ways through an ever growing network of drones, surveillance equipment and espionage.  We’re KILLING American citizens who we only suspect were actually working for terrorist networks and the list could go on and on.  Our economy remains in shambles.   Bailouts for the very people who have put us (at least partially) in this mess in the first place.  In short, a whole host of things that need working on that have nothing to do with eroding the “building block of freedom, the family” as you like to say.

“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Okay, seriously, this album is one of the all-time greatest things ever put to tape.  Even in the middle of my Heavy Metal phase P. E. was the heaviest.  The follow-up (Fear of a Black Planet) was the last album released before the sampling law went into effect so it is amazing in it’s own right (Welcome to the Terrordome is one of my favorite songs ever!!!) but It Takes a Nation is just incredible…at points its almost TOO much.  As a white suburban kid I’d never had to think about the socio-economic problems that sections of America were facing but you sure as hell were gonna think about it when Chuck D. hit the mic.   Night of the Living Baseheads, Rebel Without a Pause and most powerfully Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos told stories that quite frankly woke me up.  And then there’s the sheer genius of having the in-house hype man Flava-Flav to “lighten” things up.  It always seemed more like he was eggin’ Chuck on to me…making him rhyme even harder, deliver even stronger.  The enigma that was Terminator X backed the whole thing up.  Hell, they even dedicated songs to him (which was pretty common in those days) that were some of their best material.  And then there’s Professor Griff and the S1W’s.  When I saw P. E. in Atlanta opening for U2 the first thing that happened was that the entire stage went dark and then the sirens started and the S1W’s (Security of the First World) came marching out with Prof. Griff talking about the end of life as we know it.  This made quite the impression on a young man of 14.  I credit that show with changing the way I looked at how powerful music could be.  Later, a FUGAZI show would change that again.  At this point, however, my brain was set on fire by P. E.’s explosive “heavy metal” attack…when they played Bring The Noise, even the dude in the Alice in Chains shirt one row up was dancing…ain’t that some shit.

My world was never the same…

Fond this whilst stumbling around on here and thought it fitting…

(via comicallyvintage)