Tough Old Bird

Usually, the first thing I do when I wake up in the afternoon is to check my voicemail and email - since I'm working while you sleep/sleeping while most of you are at work, I'm kind of hard to reach. Yesterday, there was an email from my cousin from early that morning, letting me know that my 91-year-old Grandmother (who has been battling Alzheimer's for several years) was not doing well - she had slipped into a coma several days ago, and, while she was resting comfortably, he didn't expect her to be with us much longer. Needless to say, this was not how I wanted to hear from him - the last time I saw him was when my father died unexpectedly last summer. I emailed him back, asking him to keep me informed and started making a mental checklist of what I would need to do to get to Pittsburgh in the next several days. Several minutes later, a reply appeared in my inbox - apparently at some point in the afternoon, my Grandmother opened her eyes, sat up, and asked for some chocolate ice cream.

The way I figure it, if you make it to 91, you deserve all the damn ice cream you want. Love ya, Gram.

The Aftermath

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. I had a great time with the family, although I was pretty exhausted by the end of a day full of cooking (Mom's back problems continue, so I stepped in and did as much as I could), assembling toys, giving lessons on MP3 players, etc.

I Finally got a picture of my roommates' car after the accident:



Pretty gnarly, huh? Thank God he wasn't in it. But the best part is what he replaced it with:


A full size conversion van! It's totally bitchin' - I can't even look at it without hearing the opening riff from "Slow Ride". If he turns his back long enough, I'm totally going to cover the inside with orange shag carpeting and paint the outside with a mural of a wizard riding a unicorn over a rainbow in outer space. A friend's band is coming to town next month, and I say we dig out our jean jackets, grab a few cases of Natty Light and cruise the parking lot for rock chix.

I am working on a couple of projects right now and should have write-ups posted in the near future (including the first-ever General Discontent how-to file!) Stay tuned...

Ho Ho Ho

I just got back from a trip to my best friend's house to give my godchildren their Xmas presents, and had to share a pic I snapped with my cameraphone:



Looks like Mom got more from Santa than she bargained for. And ladies, if your husband is a juvenile meathead (like my friends & I), don't let him set up the advent box display.

...and to all a goodnight

Just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays, have fun and be safe. Just some odds 'n ends before the brief Xmas hiatus:

-I may be posting an interesting postscript to the saga of the missing Dodge. Stay tuned.

-I haven't had a chance to plug in the Big Muff yet, so no reviews on the sound. I'm not too crazy about the looks - one of the things I liked about my old one was that it looked like it was built in a Soviet factory - it was ugly-ass green, made of riveted together plates of steel, and had three big, black, chunky knobs on it. I could practically picture a guard in an ushanka with a Kalashnikov over his soldier, walking out on to factory floor after the fall of the Soviet Union and announcing, "No more tanks! You build these now! For American who plays the rock-and-roll!" (Why do the Russian stereotypes that live in my head only speak broken English?) The grey-faced, babushka-clad women would never miss a beat, and would start solemnly assembling the new contraptions for the Imperialist westerners. I'm amazed it wasn't labeled in Cyrillic, for God's sake. The new one looks too "modern" (albeit a Communist-bloc occupant's idea of modern). And the finish is some kind of textured powdercoating that looks durable - too durable. One of the cool things about my old one was that it was all dented and scarred and half the paint was missing. It really added points to my punk-rock cred. Maybe I'll tie the new one to my bumper and drive around for a while.

Since there's a complete lack of content in this post, I'll point out two new (to me, anyway) bands that I've been digging lately - Straylight Run (coolest namesake ever) and Hawthorne Heights. Check 'em out.

It's heeeeeeeeere...

A journey of a thousand miles...

It must be hardwired into the men of my generation to start questioning your place in the universe at a certain age, because lately many of my friends (both online and in meatspace) seem to be doing just that. So, I thought I might as well post my thoughts on it.

Once upon a time, I graduated college and got a job. The job paid very little (like a couple bucks above minimum wage) but I liked it. I got to work with cool people doing cool stuff and got to play with lots of cool gear. Since the pay was lousy, a friend & I started doing web pages on the side (this was back in the days when knowing the *blink* tag was enough HTML experience for people to hire you on the spot). One particular business did so well with their web page that they offered me a whole lot of money to come aboard full time. At the new job, despite hearing "It must be AWESOME to work here!" about a hundred times a week, I was miserable. Management would ask me for solutions, and I would come up with them, along with elaborate research & detailed instructions on how to implement them. They would then proceed to do absolutely nothing, and blame me when the problems didn't magically disappear. I hated it and was giving myself an ulcer and hadn't slept for the better part of a year when some idiots decided to crash some planes into the World Trade Center, and I got laid off. Simple as that.

The loss of my job, along with some unexpected medical bills, pretty much served to decimate my finances and my credit rating. Know what? I wasn't any less happy. I sure wasn't thrilled about being broke, but I realized that I didn't need to make a ton of money to be happy. I re-enrolled in school and earned a masters' degree. Now, several years later, I have all these friends telling me "You have a masters' degree! You could easily get a better paying job, then you could get a bigger house, a new car, etc.". Then I could be as happy as they are - They, who have $220K houses and two new cars in the garage. They, who have mortgage payments bigger than my gross monthly income. They, who work on salary, go in at 6AM, and come home at 8PM too exhausted to play with their kids. They, who have 120-mile commutes every day. They, who work on commission alongside backstabbing assholes. No thanks.

I eventually did find another job that paid about the same as I was making before. I like it - I wouldn't say that I charge out of bed every day rarin' to get to work, but I genuinely don't mind going. I like what I do, and I like (most of) the people I work with. And the best part? - I leave work after 8 hours, I go home, and I don't think about it. I have enough time and money left over to work on my little projects. I might not be raking in the salary that some of my friends are, but life's too short to work a job you hate.

People always say "If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life". You have to be careful here - I've had friends who were fellow amateur photographers, and went out on their own to open their own studio. The result? Photography BECAME a job. One that they hated. I've known people who practiced music, mechanics, & art as a hobby, and when they turned it into a job, it got a whole lot less fun. Jobs, by nature, are always going to have co-workers and clients and deadlines and late nights and things that just make life a lot less fun in general.

I guess my point is, it's not where your money comes from, it's what you do. Do what makes you happy, even if you don't make any money at it. Even if it's at home, in your spare time. Even if nobody ever sees it (although the Internet now remedies that, to a degree). You might work at a pharmacy from 9 to 5, but maybe you're really a photographer. You might get paid to drive a forklift, but you're really a painter. I'm pretty sure the subcontractor who was pulling cable at work the other day was actually a gardener. Don't let your environment define you. And don't get too worked up over your job. I know the anxieties of "What if I lose my job? I have no savings - I won't be able to pay my bills! I'll be homeless! Living on the streets! I'll have to put on dark sunglasses and sell pencils from a cup!" Well, it happened to me, and I survived. Mom always said "Don't worry, things will work out alright" and I quietly rolled my eyes at her naivete. Turns out she's been around a lot longer than me, and she's a lot smarter too.

Sing along in the age of paranoia

Odds 'n' ends...

Well, the missing Dodge has been found. Turns out it was taken by Mr. Smithers, the owner of the haunted amusement park. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for...

...oh wait, that's not it. What I meant was, my roommate took the license plates and his parking tag off in anticipation of having it towed to the junkyard. This turned out to be not such a good idea, because someone reported it as abandoned (even though we contacted three members of the condo board and told them what the situation was. Nobody is rushing forward to own up to it). The good news is that the insurance company offered him $2900 for the car (he paid $1800 for it a year ago). And the impound lot is right next door to the insurance adjusters' office.

No real news on the "projects" front, as the weather here has been terrible and is looking to get worse. The first rumblings of cabin fever have begun rattling around in my head, so I oughtta be in real good shape a few months from now. I wonder sometimes if my focus here should be more narrow and worry that I've gotten off-track lately, but I noticed a pretty good jump in traffic the past few weeks, so I guess I'm doing something right. I'll just keep rambling, let me know what you do/don't like.

Work continues on the studio, and I still fear losing my better judgment when it comes to buying gear. I decided to stop by the pawn shop the other day just to look around, and I left with a Fender combo amp, a Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz pedal, and a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo pedal. I rationalized these purchases as best I can: 1.) I only paid $90 for the amp, which is the same price as the crappy practice amps with half the power that I have been looking at; 2.) The Hyper Fuzz is a bad-ass pedal (think The Melvins and Deftones) that is no longer in production, and I got it for $39; and 3.) the guy threw in the Danelectro for free, since it had a knob broken off (I had it dissembled and rigged a new knob in 15 minutes). Still, I think I'm gonna have to skip the big guitar show next month. I instructed the guy at the pawn shop to physically remove me from the premises if I show up in the next 30 days.

Since I liked the picture at Drew's site so much, I ripped him off and created a collage of some of the pieces that will be coming together in the home studio. (Please ignore the fact that he has lots of cool vintage gear, and mine is all crappy new stuff).



...oh yeah, one more thing. I would never advocate music piracy on a public web page (even though mashups shouldn't be considered piracy, but that's what all the hubbub is about), but "a friend of mine" downloaded American Edit by Team9 and Party Ben on Dean Gray Tuesday, and assures me it's amazing - he's been listening to it all week. There is already a ton of info out there about the album and the controversy surrounding it, so I won't get into that here. Needless to say you should find a copy and download it before the record companies stomp it into oblivion...

Lost: 1996 Dodge

So, Saturday before last, I ran out to Radio Shack (one of my thrice-weekly visits, as of late) to return something. It had been snowing/sleeting a little, but the roads seemed fine. Twenty minutes later, on the way home, they were terrible - I started sliding on a bridge, and I almost fell on my ass three times just trying to walk to my back door. I called my roommate and told him to be EXTREMELY careful on his way home from work.

Apparently he didn't take my advice, as he called me a little while later and said he slid off the road, and he needed me to call him a tow truck. Suddenly, I heard someone in the background say "He flipped it!" And my roommate said "I'll call you back" and hung up. I guess the story is: He slid off the road and came to rest right next to another guy, who had done the exact same thing minutes before - turns out he's one of our neighbors. While they're standing there figuring out what to do next, a car on the OTHER side of the highway (westbound) goes off the road, and flips over. My roommate & neighbor run across the highway to help them - the car was full of passengers, and one of them was extremely pregnant. While they are helping them, ANOTHER car goes off the road back in the eastbound lane. It also flips over, and LANDS DIRECTLY ON TOP OF MY ROOMMATES' CAR.

Needless to say, the car is totaled. The cops closed down the road, ambulances came to check everyone out (no one was badly hurt) and it took hours to sort everything out. Problem is, we can't find my roommate's car. It was sitting out front, now it's gone. The insurance company says they didn't tow it. The condo association says they didn't tow it. It definitely didn't go anywhere under its own power. Nobody would steal a totaled car, would they?

Bright antenna bristle with the energy

Many moons ago, I was a bass player. To be blunt, I was pretty lousy - strictly a root-fifth kinda player, but I enjoyed it. I had a couple of roommates who were a decent guitarist and a passable singer, respectively, and we would jam together once in a while.

The main reason I played bass was the same reason as 90% of all the bass players in the world - I was never a very good guitarist. Seriously, go see some local bands (you don't do that enough anyway) and talk to the bass players - almost all of them began as guitarists, but started "filling in" on bass as a necessity. Sure, there's the occasional guy who grew up obsessed with Geddy Lee or Jaco Pastorius, but those guys are weird and usually wind up composing sci-fi rock operas in their parents' basements. See, guitarists & singers are a dime a dozen. Drummers are pretty common, but are frequently replaced due to their tendency to drink all your beer & sleep with your girlfriend (but they're the ones with a van & a rehearsal space, so it's a fair trade). There is always a shortage of bass players, because nobody's that into it. I mean, really, if you were an average kid growing up in the suburban wasteland of America, did you wanna be Eric Clapton or Jack Bruce? Jimi Hendrix or Noel Redding? Eddie Van Halen or Michael Anthony? I rest my case. Nobody likes the bass player. That's okay, though, I looked at it as job security.

My favorite part was the gear - I had a beautiful Ibanez bass, as well as several others. I had an insanely large Trace Elliot amplifier rig that I got for a song when the company was sold off. And oh, the stompboxes. I had dozens of 'em. Everything from your everyday Boss & DOD effects to vintage Electro-Harmonix boxes and outrageously expensive pedals from boutique manufacturers. I had to build a massive pedalboard with a custom wiring system to hold 'em all. I would run a synth through a ring-mod through a flanger and just get the trippiest space-rock noises ever.

After getting out of school and suddenly finding myself with a job and a car and a mortgage, I didn't have much time to play and was pretty much perpetually broke. One day I was sitting in my home office, paying bills and generally lamenting my lack of funds, and my eyes wandered over to my gear. Thousands of dollars' worth, just sitting there, gathering dust. So I slowly sold all of it off via eBay, and that was that.

What's the point of all this? Well, as I've mentioned, I recently bought a new Mac. It came with the requisite (and handy) iLife apps, including iDVD and iPhoto, but the kicker was a relatively new addition: GarageBand. I opened it up and played with it a little. I like to edit together vacation videos & family photos into movies to give as stocking-stuffers, and initially I thought "This might be a cool way to add some simple background music". As I played with it a little more, I realized: I could actually do something with this, music-wise. Sure, it's not ProTools or Logic, but it's a surprisingly feature-rich program for home recording, considering it's free. It's light-years ahead of the little 4-track PortaStudios I used to play around with. And just like that, I was back into it. I bought a simple USB keyboard to use as a MIDI controller, but that wasn't enough - soon I was dusting off my old mics and heading to eBay to bid on some basic mixers and cables. My town is blessed (or cursed) with both Sam Ash and Guitar Center retail locations, and it wasn't long before I was headed their way (during a freak snowstorm, no less) - I needed a guitar. I am consciously trying to restrain my budget, so I bought the cheapest Strat they had in stock. I could practically feel my wallet itching at the effects counter, but I settled on the least expensive multi-effects pedal I could find. Weird, because I was always an analog snob before when it came to effects. I have started tearing my home office apart in order to dig out everything I'll be using, and to re-wire the computers to do what I need. It'll probably be awhile before I have anything I'm ready to share with the world, but someday I hope to post some stuff here. I will post some pictures of my "home studio" setup as soon as it's in order. The bad news is, the big Guitar Show is coming to town in a month - Lord help me...

Give till it hurts!

Just a quick note to mention that I just made my annual donation to Child's Play, a great charity started by the guys at Penny Arcade. I won't get into all the details here, as they do a great job explaining it at their site. If you're still looking for a worthy cause for the holidays, check 'em out.

10.9.1940 - 12.8.1980

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
A new one just begun
And so happy Christmas
We hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now

Happy Christmas

One-armed paper-hanger...

Sorry for the lack of conetent lately, I have been running around doing the Xmas shopping thang (just about done now) and working on a good bit of tinkering at home, the fruits of which will hopefully make it here before too long. I am also trying to get registered at the local college for some classes next quarter. In lieu of any actual news (and because Surly requested it) here are some random pics of Das Bus (which is actually kind of depressing right now - it won't start and I can't get motivated enough to go outside in 20-degree weather to work on it). Ah well...

Ah, the clean, classic lines of a refridgerator box...

No, the Westfalia decal and the rear emblem aren't correct for the year. I don't care, I like 'em.

The huge factory steering whell makes for a tight fit with us corn-fed Midwestern boys, so a smaller wheel from California Import Parts was added.

Swanky new seat covers go nicely with the zebra dash cover in the above pic. Can you sense the theme I'm going for?

She didn't come with a spare or a mount...

...so one was added...

...along with a snazzy cover (which was later vandalized by one of the little darlins in the neighborhood). They also stole my rear emblem and tried to rip off my country code sticker. Nice.