Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Damn the NAMM!!

The NAMM show is this weekend in Anaheim. I have always wanted to go. It's a musical buffet and I fancy music. And musicians. I have word into my peeps who I know go every year to see if they can get me in. Damn it all. It seems like tight security, otherwise I would just waltz in. I'm good at waltzes.

Be my savior, John Stack!

10 Little Knowns

10 RANDOM THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ME!

1. Growing up I wanted to be a paleontologist and dreamed of going to the Bad Lands in Wyoming. I wrote a book about dinosaurs when I was 8 that got an honorable mention at the county fair.

2. I'm far too much of an open book.

3. I love emeralds. I'd take an emerald over a diamond in a heart beat.

4. I've spent 12 hours reading in a bookstore. It's my retreat from the world. I'll my own library when I get my own place.

5. I love cleaning bathrooms. You get everything wet and wipe it all down. How much easier does it get?

6. I loathe candy corn and coconut.

7. I could live anywhere in the world for a year. And I'd like to.

8. Choreography is something I am extreemly good at.

9. Kitsch, thrift store, leopard print, Hollywood antique: feelings and designs I want to decorate my own place in.

10. If I could cover myself in tattoos, I would.

We Close Our Eyes

I've been living my life from the rear facing seat of a Volvo station wagon. Dear God, someone help me turn the fuck around.

I think I'm gonna be sick.

We close our eyes and dream and the world has turned around again

When everybody is running in the big raceAnd having a good timeWho am I to cast a shadowWho am I?
I looked death in the face last night
I saw him in a mirror
And he simply smiled
He told me not to worry
He told me just to take my time
We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and dream and another year has come and gone
We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and dream ...

And if you come to me
And if you touch my hand
I might just slip away
I might just disappear
Who am I?
And if you think I'm worth it
And if you think it's not too late
We might start falling
If we don't try too hard
We might start falling in love

We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and dream and another year has come and gone
We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and dream ...

We're on the healing path
We're on a roller coaster ride
That could never turn back
And if you love me
And if you really try
To make the seconds count
Then we can close our eyes

We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and and another year has come and gone
We close our eyes and the world has turned around again
We close our eyes and dream ...

We close our eyes and the world has turned around again

Dirty Blonde

I have found a frightening new role model. I feel dirty and wrong even considering it but here goes: Courtney Love.

I know.

I picked up Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love and opened it to the middle. Honestly, I was looking for what she might have written about Kurt's suicide and any pictures that might accompany those entries. I'm morbid and like that kind of stuff. Deal. I was surprised to see only two pages, one photo of a fan vigil, a few words and not much else. Interesting. I sat down and started flipping through the entire book and walked away astonished.

One thing to be said for Courtney Love – she never censors herself. She says what she feels and without fear of reprimand. Or so she comes across, at least. And I know these are her diaries and a place where one would feel free to do so, but many people aren't even honest with themselves let alone the world. She comes across on paper the way she does in life: without apology.

I want to be as tenacious, bold, aggressive, confident, brazen, outlandish, determined, inspired as Courtney Love. She never doubted herself. She went after what she wanted and she got it all. Most of the diary is filled with song lyrics and I read them for the first time. Hole was never a band I was into. I couldn't get past the off-key screaming to listen to the lyrics. I saw the passion in her words. It's just plain honest. It's that stark vulnerability shining through. Choice words and no apologies. She never let anything stop her. Not having a child or her husband's suicide. She had a two-page list of all the things she wanted to teach her children about being good and creative people. I was astonished. I had no idea how much thought and love and desire she had put into having a family. Not something she projects in her outward celebrity life. She had lists of her goals while pursuing acting, her goals for her band, plans, ideas and strategies, photographs, fliers, drawings and letters. She bulldozed over roadblocks and took side streets, never sat on her laurels and always bounded forward to the next project or adventure.

Courtney is an intelligent woman who reads and researches. She had lists of important women throughout history and their accomplishments, spiritual ideas and books to look into and read, and her reaction to all of it. She's eloquent and well versed. She can't type for shit, that's true. And her handwriting is damn near illegible. But she's not spewing forth empty, regurgitated popisms. She's not talking about the latest TV show or inane, vapid bullshit. She wrote with depth about art, spiritualism, politics, literature and she had real heroes. She has never tried to make herself a brand to sell. She's truly an artist unlike all those little lost and empty musical outfits clogging the airways with inane claptrap.

Courtney is certainly no saint, but her diaries showed me a side of her I didn't know was possible. I had written her off as a drug addicted lunatic attention whore who fucked her way to the top. And while all of that may still be true there is that raw, honest, loving side of her, an intelligence and depth that her media focused shennanagins belie. She's a devout Buddhist. Who knew? She is honest with herself and, what's more, she's honest with the world. She's not tripped up by things that would derail so many others' plans. She's not always pretty and clean or agreeable but she is undeniable. And I admire the hell out of her.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Climb to Conquer

Cancer, that is. I and my fellow Peacemaker fans and friends are going to kick some serious cancer ass this February 24th in our 4th annual Climb to Conquer Cancer. We haul our hungover asses out of our warm and comfy beds long before the crack of dawn to gather at South Mountain in Phoenix and walk 5 increasingly steep miles to the top and to victory.


This year's walk hits home for me and the crew as our good friend Phil Rowe is taking on his third battle with cancer. Phil is a wonderful, passionate, endlessly entertaining man, and the talented guitarist for Suspect Audio. I am walking for Phil, his delicious wife Mandy, and their adorable daughter Kira.


If you'd like to donate to our awesome cause feel free to swing by My personal page an drop some cash on me. :)


Or, for the slightly more daring, those who would like to join our team, Loco Locals, can do so here. I don't even live in Tempe anymore and I joined. Today is the last day to join our team and qualify for our badass team shirt!


Fly in, drive out, hitchhike, teleport. I'm-a be there. What more reason do you need to join?

Thank you all and remember: when you see cancer, kick it in the nads.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

This used to be my playground

I fucking hate this town but it's mine to hate. I hate feeling like an outsider in my own town. I come downtown on the weekend, namely Sunday, and I feel like I am intruding on everyone's experience. Faces aren't familiar and they're giving me weird looks. This town is too fucking small for all the shit they try to put on every weekend. There is one road through town. One. Everything else is a residential and even those streets are packed in with cars, people walking their dogs, baby strollers, their hats and sunglasses, fanny packs and arm loads of Ojai Visitors Guides. And they are all 50 and older. All of them. They take their sweetass strolling time crossing the streets and think it is perfectly acceptable to drive 10 miles an hour…10 miles an hour…down our one road. I know you're sight seeing and all but some of us actually live here and have shit we need to get done. There is not enough parking for anything, ever. The farmers market sends them out in droves and then there's the peddler's fair down the street. All the pretentious environmentalists with their organic this and save that, hemp this and purified that. And the artists. The artists! I consider myself an artist but I must not be as I'm just not an asshole. I guess I should work on that. The snotass theatre in town, Theatre 150, just moved into the funeral home. The funeral home. I'm all for using all kinds of spaces for anything but seriously, I'll never be able to see a show there and not think of the friends funerals I have been to right there in that very room. They're such fucking snobs and I shouldn't be surprised. They aren't community theatre but they're not equity either. I sent my headshot, resume and letter to them when I came home from college and no one ever contacted me or returned my calls. Like this town needs more elitism. If you ever thought Malibu was bad then you truly haven't been looked down on. And that's what I don't get. I'm not supposed to feel this way in my town. MY town. I was born here. I was raised here. That's my jr high and my high school and, what's more, that's my parent's jr high and high school. This is where I hung out as a kid, this is where I hung out as a teenager, this is where I did my first play, this is the park my family gets together at every Easter, this used to be the Christmas tree farm where we went every year the day after Thanksgiving to cut down our tree. I went to high school with the families that own Rains, Boccali's, Serendipity, The Hut, Rubens, Bonnie Lu's, Corrales, and zillions of other companies and eateries in town. And yet because I am not pretentious, loaded with cash, a famous actor or writer, or a tourist, I am made to feel like vermin. Is this Les Miz? I wanna go home. And I thought I was. It makes me want to wear a bright pink shirt that says, "I was born here! Ojai Native, make way!" I fantasize about getting into an argument with someone about a landmark or an event and them trying to impress me with, "I've been in the valley for 15 years!" and I say, "I've been here for almost 30 so suck it." I over heard a man once who was so impressed by this woman who said she had been here since 99. I wanted to scream, "I've been here since 78!" I've had tourists totally shocked to hear I was born here when they roll through town for the tennis tournament, creatively called The Ojai, the countries oldest amateur tournament. Yes, this really is more than a vacation destination to some people. Yes, we have a hospital and schools and even banks! And more art galleries and hoity toity shit than you could ever want to see. The actual living here part is lost on people. It really is a community with families and gatherings and our own histories. It's one thing to walk into Tombstone and be surprised it's a functioning town with a post office and natives all it's own. That town has a huge history and is a national landmark. We're no Tombstone. We have our own major events for the much less informed and even less interested as they're of a spiritual and new age nature. Yes, all the movie stars live here and yes, The Bionic Woman took place here and that show Brothers and Sisters, and we were the final shot from East of Eden that represented Shangri-La. Guess what our city nickname is? But we're not what you'd think of as a tourist mecca. I never felt like I lived in a tourist trap and goddamn if I don't. This town used to feel warm and worn and broken in and comfortable. Now everything feels shiny and plastic and straight backed and rigid. And it's just too fucking small. Why do I feel like a stranger walking into a coffee shop? And the two chairs at the bar at the Starbucks we now have, outside the city limits of course, were taken this morning. Along with all of the other chairs. And in one fell swoop I have nowhere to go to write. Done. One shot. So I drove out to the other end of town to Soule Park and am squinting vigorously at the screen that wasn't made for outdoor use. Maybe this is the cosmos telling me my time here in this valley is done as it slowly squeezes me out. I would agree with it. But this used to feel like home. And more and more often I feel like a ghost walking the streets of a once familiar land. The clock is ticking down.

Dig, if you will, a picture

Upon discussing his exclusive male modeling prospects with my burgeoning scarf empire Local H beguiled me with his vision for our future...

"Simple modeling ain't gonna make us Fortune 500. You know what will? That's right, a super sweet commercial on cable access television. Let me lay this on ya...

We fade in on me in an upscale European looking bar, except that we're low budget so it's probably not gonna look like the good Europe, but we'll settle for nothing less than Bulgarian looking, this much I promise you.

All right, so I'm working my craft on these uppity Bulgarian broads, but I'm gettin' no play whatsoever, when suddenly I see in the corner of the bar a super foxy snake charmer. She lures me in with her piccolo (recorder?) and lo and behold what pops out of her wicker basket? Not a snake, but a fabulous KitaBan scarf!

So I wrap myself in awesomeness and suddenly the Bulgarians think I'm the second coming of Swayze, but I pay them no mind as I kick open the bar door and hit the streets.

And as the wind catches the scarf and it dances playfully off my shoulder I become the center of attention. I mean, I'm like a black hole covered in super glue, no one can resist my animal magnetism.

But I show my sweet side by stopping next to a downtrodden minority child jumping rope and use my scarf to get the most extreme session of Double Dutch going. But pretty soon my shoulder gets tired and I leave.

And as I round the corner I see the requisite love interest you've been patiently waiting for me to introduce about to board a city bus. I must have her, but she's out of earshot. Well, for your average joe she's gone forever. But for the savvy scarf-dressed man, she's just a lasso throw away. I hook her around the waist and pull her firmly to me. Freeze there as we stare longingly into each other's eyes.

And we finish by having the low budget equivalent of Antonio Banderas whisper, "KitaBan Scarves... Are You Exceptional Yet?"

Oh, and did I mention that everything but the scarf is in black and white? Cause it totally is.

Tell me that shit won't make Scorsese punch an orphan."

Wisdom thrown down from the mountain. Mt. Local H.

Are you exceptional yet?