Whereas porn and the sex industry has entered into the globalized mainstream consciousness, American cinema is still woefully inept at exploring it. Granted movies like Boogie Nights and Sex, Lies and Videotape did do a fairly excellent job of exploring the rough edges, there really hasn’t been much since then beyond the typical Seth Rogan/Kevin Smith fair.

My relationship to porn is a tricky one. I think everyone’s relationship to it is. How can you talk about sex or fetishism without offending someone? You can preface it by saying “This is only natural and healthy.” And thats a fairly accurate statement. Sexuality is a natural, if not complicated beast. A biological itch that drives some mad and others to pieces. Its incidentally the first thing that shines bright stepping off the bus from any fairly tale midwestern town to a big city. The most easy and hard thing to offer. A supply that seems to elude demand.

What turns us on and off is a highly personal thing. Sometimes its locked in a cellar, shying away from the light for fear people may think we are strange. Other times its worn proudly without care of what society thinks. What people are into in terms of sexuality can be demonized to the point of exile… sometimes for very good reason. But its far too easy to wave a moral flag then to confront the realities of such things.

There are people out there who choose to do porn. Who choose to watch porn. Who choose to have sex. Who choose not to have sex. The damage present in the emotional whirlwind of interpersonal relations is staggering. Bringing sex into the equation ultimately shifts it to an automatic category five.

Three of the more disturbingly beautiful films I’ve seen this year had to do with sex. Moreso, they were based around the business of such. Some bordered on exploitation and some black comedy. Each of them interestingly enough revolved around the poor, the downtrodden and the capitalization of dreams that seemingly would never come true.

In Dennis Iliadis’s adaption of the greek novel Hardcore, its hard to gauge whether you should be entranced or disturbed. Many of my problems with the cinema of Gaspar Noe are apparent here. Beautifully shot but at times often graphically shocking.

You have two main characters who start out as prostitutes for a particularly despicable pimp. This pimp makes it a point of personally breaking in his girls in the foulest of ways. The story follows two such girls as they try to escape the inevitable only to graduate to higher levels of the same game.

It doesn’t help the argument against exploitation that the actresses happen to be beautiful. To be fair, their male counterparts get equal amount of humiliation. There is an interesting take on an idyllic Gap ad in the middle of the film that tries to make the bitter case for their casting. Even in a wholesome advertisement for clothes, they’re still being pimped out and its still jarring to see their fake smiles.

But for the most part, the constant skin and the dreamlike pouting of the main character’s narrative mixed with the slide guitar theme borders on excess and objectification. Its sickly voyeurism is held together only by the seemingly feminist core of the bisexual relationship born out of necessity and fear. Sex is ground down to a dirty paste here and its only tenderness between friends seems to be the very thing thats unmakes them all.

Less stark and depressing, is the Slovenian offering from Damjan Kozole simply entitled Porno film. Revolving around a trio of hapless ex-window dressers (which there is apparently a local school for) turned criminal element who decide to make a porno film. Dipping into one of their crew’s inherited call girl pool, the main character sets out to make an authentic film experience based on his obsession with porn throughout the years.

In contrast, the girls aside from the polish lead Kalinka, are more accurately portrayed as poor girls kidnapped and sold into slavery from Budapest via the sex trade. Kalinka seems to be different, reciting Polish poetry at the audition and acutely aware of business as business. When Charlie starts to write himself out of the movie appearing only as a photo head shot, his friends enlist Kalinka to figure out the reasons why.

More lighthearted and bumbling than the dirty surrealities of Hardcore, we see the almost innocent and detached fascination with porn through the eyes of Charlie. When locked in a room to ‘practice’ his scenes with Kalinka, Charlie nervously strikes up a conversation about her life as a prostitute. His detachment lying in his inability to recognize Kalinka as more than a prostitute roots itself in deeper emotional issues including his inability to perform.

When a down on his luck stockbroker loses everything, he turns to a daily chore of raising his special marijuana plants in an empty luxury apartment. He spends his nights utterly blown on the phone talking to a advice hotline about his problems. Below him, the taiwanese Betelnut girls dance and flirt selling stimulants to passersby. After passing off a fake coin for cigarettes to the newest Betelnut girl, Shin, he is stopped by her trying to pawn a lamp. And that is as they say the start of the ridiculousness of how they meet.

While not so much about porn and more about sex as a method to sell commerce, the betelnut phenomenon isn’t so far removed from the working class Hooters set. The imagery in Help Me Eros that takes place in this THC laced haze tells more of the higher order than the banal industry that keeps the world humming. The infamous scene of the cooking show displaying a carp being cooked and eaten alive with glee as our main character hopelessly watches baked out of his mind. We meet this man with a magical pot crop that treats them as children who can’t bring himself to sell it yet will give away everything until he is lying naked on a roof oblivious to bills, social codes, sex laws, or even his own well being.

Help Me Eros is by far the more graphic of the three. The main character’s weed seems to invoke some strange erotic euphoria in all that smoke it. It crescendo’s to a threesome on the aforementioned rooftop while brand name logos are projected onto a naked mess. At the root its about a man who doesn’t seem to care anymore walking around like a ghost in a dirty world waiting to fade. And fade he does… in an endless stream of lottery tickets.

Loss, obsession, dreams, lust, beauty, sadness. Its the running joke of all porn film makers. The Boogie Nights paradigm of wanting to finally make the most artistically appreciated porno film ever. Something that engages mentally as well as physically. A film that titillates as well as stimulates the mind. Something that addresses all the complexities of sex.

Fortunately for the films above, the porn industry and its clientelle is hardly interested in this kind of reality. Porn is serviceable at best. Its like making tylenol pills that have an intricate taste profile and wrapping. While pretty it escapes the general user. “I just want to get off and go back to bed.”

At the heart of that disconnect lurks the heartache to be explored. Sometimes dirty, sometimes sexy, and sometimes absurd. If you are looking for some semi-erotic yet thought provoking material, you can’t go wrong tracking these films down.

Just don’t expect to get off on it. And if you do… what does that say about you for worse or for better?

What interests me more about the occurrence of such nocturnal disturbances is that they come during periods of readjustment and unfamiliarity. I wonder sometimes if the brain just becomes excited about having to deal with new data, that it goes into overtime working on deep seeded damage via the subconscious. If I were a worrying man of which I sometimes am, it makes me question why the same thing keeps bubbling up as a result of turmoil and change.

Relationships. I sometimes wonder if there are people out in this world who are free from the hell of human need. If those people exist, I sometimes wonder if they are just fooling themselves. A trick of the light or the mind that seems to be the key to some metaphysical understanding of the universe. A single key event that I’ve never been too shy to talk about openly seems to be at the very crux of my being, like an animal licking at an open sore.

Fucking relationships. Without which, a whole economic support structures would not exist for music or entertainment. Thick, tarry blog stools would cease their festering out on the open, like a small but effective shit from a yorkshire terrier. An entire generation and population would course correct itself out of existence. And a moment would simply be a moment and there would be no choice other to accept it.

But progeny and alchemy exist. A natural occurrence that goes beyond basic biological principles. A delicate science of shifting properties. Of words, conversations, and vocal inflections that secretly release the tetris blocks of chemical emotion to bind on the brain. A manifest destiny of achievements unlocked willed by shadowy forces. The arcane mystery of love and companionship.

I’ve often secretly made fun of people including myself who prefer the company of automata over the organic. Nowhere else is this more evident than on a bicycle. The illusion of control is nowhere more apparent than operating a vehicle. In my marginal case study, its behind a fixed gear bike. You hear it all the time and it burns in your ears. This symbiosis that you achieve when its just you, the bicycle and the road. Its there whenever you need it. You can go anywhere together, safe and free. The permanence starkly contrasted against the reality that never quite sinks in. That you could be pummeled to death by the brute force of either your own or another’s carelessness.

When I was younger and less experienced… possibly less jaded… I looked at relationships often the same way. I felt invincible. As if I was now part of a unit or organization. That I could take myself where ever I wanted to go. That this union was locked in some infinite groove on a novelty record. That we would always be. That we would always grow.

Relationships much like bicycling are prone to the harsh realizations we never want to accept. The hidden cancers that grow beneath the skin. The invisible plots to overthrow the angels. The storm in heaven. The harbinger of pessimism and the threat of chaos versus the promise of stability.

If there is one glaringly obvious lesson I’ve learned, its that nothing is ever stable. And what better time to remind me like a fork in my eye then when things are most erratic. When everything is in flux, even my own brain has the audacity to point out the “I told you so’s.” That institutionally everything we live and breathe is based on lies and delusions. That men and women are no better than animals in their higher order thinking. That honor was just a perverse condition best left for the Zatoichi’s of this world.

I read this piece in this trash magazine a while back about easy lovers. It seemed like the feral embodiment of New York City as a whole. This nihilistic approach to interpersonal relationships as some disposable experience. It was a concept at the very heart was at odds with the fibrous roots of my being. I detested it. I spat up in my mouth at the very thought of the temporary nature of events and moments. Love is forever. Love is the solution. Love will keep us together. Love will tear us apart.

Things are taken away from us in ways that we cannot imagine. We lose limbs. We become paralyzed. We make decisions that people will never forgive and we become ostracized. We start wearing the wrong pair of sneakers and the people we knew start worrying about being seen in the same camera lens. Loved ones pass on to wherever it is that you believe or disbelieve in.

All the while, we think deep in our imaginary hearts that its on lock. That forever means forever. That promises are kept in some oversaturated 35mm haze archivally for generations to come to marvel at. Look at them. They were straight out a Bertie Higgins song… draped in honey glaze, syrup and palm trees. Like some cocaine fueled rage where everything most likely feels just right in some never ending story sort of way. Until the fifteen minutes pass or however long it takes for reality to set in…

I wouldn’t fucking know.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m scared. And there is something quite liberating about that. The fact that if you ever decide to take a step in that direction again. Despite all you’ve learned. You are either completely fucking stupid or the bravest person in the world. Because knowing what you know now, you know there are no sealed deals. There is no “til death do us part.” No guarantees and no peace of mind. There’s only you, the bike and the road… metaphorically. And a whole lot of shit in between.

It could be said that I’m at my best when I stop giving a fuck. Its when my mind is most at ease. That hipster romanticism that annoys common folk. Breathing in cold air, fighting through traffic with no hands, and constant grinding. When I accept fate, however tragic it may seem. When I relax and stare death and change in the face. When I go all Chuck Norris on a mother fucker.

And when I become an easy lover.

When that day comes… I feel that reality just might implode on itself.

And pigs will fly.

Its always an interesting experience to be away from some that you’d deem to be your routine and be flooded with tons of odd feelings upon your return. Maybe its your brain filtering out unnecessary information or possibly guarding you from potential overload. Sometimes upon your first step back into the life that is your own, it feels more so like the later.

I was overwhelmed this morning by both my own internal circadian rhythm and excess energy to clean my apartment vigorously. Three hours later, I felt almost compelled to make sure that every nook had been relieved of any excess dirt and grime. Call me more focused, relaxed or aware. I don’t know exactly what drove me to that horror. I think I just realized that I was sick of spending my quiet time in squalor.

Maybe a disconnect bring things like this into perspective. You come back and there are things that are apparently more weird and displacing than others. So while you have that weird glint or focus of unfamiliarity, you take up the knife and make the incision before the it all starts to seem normal.

ME I DISCONNECT FROM YOU

In some ways, I think its a lot more than simply being away from my natural habitat for two or so weeks. A lot of things happened. Nothing major. I wasn’t kidnapped by some weird eastern european cartel and held for ransom. But I saw things that dwarfed my daily perspective as both a human being and as an American. I met a bunch of different people and became fully aware that I’m pretty much a freak anywhere I go. So in that sense, its quite liberating.

In the end, you can be whoever you want. And be anywhere you want to be. But there are some things you can’t sever or change. Some things are so deep within you that they are automatic. And there’s no better way to see these things in action than in a crisis situation.

THUG LIFE

As freaked out as it sounds, I literally had my phone stolen right in front of me just now. A welcome back message from the universe. A newspaper and a sleight of hand trick which set me out of my chair. I grabbed the dude by the shoulder and hooded out right in the middle of the store. My phone back in my hand what else was there left to do. My fist twitching ready to clock the kid in the face.

My brain is tweaking out on caffeine and adrenaline. Its easy for myself to judge my actions. Be hard on myself for what I did or how I did it. My own stupidity for having my phone out on the table almost a centimeter away from my hand and laptop. But what matters isn’t the process or the event. Its the adjustment. Its how you react to adversity. To change. To stress. To the unknown.

I’m so addicted to the unpredictable that incidents like that exhilerate me. All I can do is sit there and wonder what it all means. Why it happens like that? What its saying in some hidden language. Always be on your toes? Never settle? Embrace pure chaos? Or don’t sleep. Or don’t be a dick and leave your phone on the table if you are sitting at the back of a coffee shop.

FUNNY TIME OF YEAR

If there is any poetic significance to any of this; this bleak and fucking jarring year that I’ve spent on some nomadic trek… its this. I’ve got to stop running away from the universe and let the universe come to me. Its quite obvious its dishing out enough random experiences and opportunities. I used to think it was some sort of divine punishment.

Now I just know its all a game of odds… and somewhere in there, it will come up a natural twenty. You’ve just got to keep rolling and play with the cards you are dealt. Kenny Rogers style. No regrets. No constant folding. Ebb and flow with the zen of it all. And in the end, what I think I’m seeking most… is the peace. The purity of action. The ceasing of second guessing and what if’s. The allocation of weight on decisions and experiences. Nothing is ever going to give me that peace. No amount of travelling, reveling, drowning in other people and desires is going to yield that.

LET TOMORROW BE

I can’t even find peace in my own home when I return. It all seems different and alien… at times even more violent and disorienting than I imagine. And thats the reality of the world.

The peace is in your perception and in your center. The eye of the storm that whips and ravages the landscape and follows some ethereal wind stream. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are with, or what time of day… What pills you take, what your favorite mixed drink, or essential album. Its not where you are from and it has nothing to do with where you are at.

It just is… water or sand running through your fingers… iPhones sliding from your personal space into a street thug’s clutch… years fading… city affinity vanishing after a couple weeks of respite in a foreign land. Rearranged furniture gripping your feng shui around its pulsing artery. Bits of information taken for granted by your conscious mind… but constructs solid in the unconscious.

It just is, man. And you know what… I think I can be fine with that.

I think I have to be.

If someone were to tell me years ago that I would get the change to stand in front of over four to six thousand people acting like a complete ass for an hour, I’d probably believe them. Although back then, I would have foolishly thought that this would automatically qualify as some quasi-religious awakening to my hobby slash career. I probably would have stomped around with a smug look on my face demanding some sort of credit or toll whenever I entered a venue back home where someone even remotely recognized me. Those would have been my early twenties.

But standing in front of a crowd like that of Thunderdome, moderately filled up with backstage alcohol and lack of sleep just reinforces one or two things. The first and foremost one is a bizarre realization thats been the tone of this whole trip. I have the ability to pace across a huge stage in front of two dj’s bouncing around like a complete idiot but I still have trouble asking beautiful and intelligent women out to lunch. The more things change… the more they stay the same.

This trip has been a vacation. I didn’t quite expect that I’d be playing out as much as I have but thats part of the fun. But there’s still the glaring reminder that seemingly its been exactly one year from where everything seemed to change. I might add it changed for the better in hindsight. But its still a very weird feeling.

GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

The quasi-spiritual significance of this mid thirties career revival if you can call it that has nothing to do with being super productive or creative. Although I have to say, I’ve learned so much about Logic and things like side chain compression that I feel insanely motivated to experiment with music again seriously. But really going back to the source of what you’ve done for so long is confusing. Standing up in front of a crowd and pretty much yelling uncomprehensible slang in rhythm seems mind numbingly banal.

Like if I sat down in a cadre of artists and theorists, I’d be the caveman at the table. They all slowly go around the table and cite their high points. An engaging lecture at a small university. A small (read: exclusive) opening at a Williamsburg gallery. A keynote at a corporate conference. And then there’s me. An emcee at a 20,000 person plus event in the Netherlands. Followed by the standard “Well that must have been interesting…”

For all intensive purposes, its not. By sheer numbers alone maybe. But at the end of the day, its me throttling myself in front of people I don’t know, playing Flavor Flav. I’m strictly a hype man. Like a ring announcer or train conductor. If you enjoyed this message, you might also like my other work as a voiceover announcer for hip hop’s version national public radio.

EVERYBODY’S LOOKING FOR SOMETHING

Its not that I’m jaded. Its almost as if I’m needing a vacation from a vacation. Its the first time I realized that I have some sort of Clark Kent syndrome going on in so many ways. Two alter ego’s battling for a synergy which will never happen. Each taking solace in an alternating whirlwind of each others daily grind. How fucked up is it that I’m eagerly awaiting returning to work? That I want my cats, my tea, my meetings, my streets, my bike, my lack of legal resins and my cavernous apartment back.

That I want to return to the life of ‘that’ guy and that two weeks later ‘that’ guy will want to return to the life of the other dude. And underneath both of them will secretly be wishing to be something completely different.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there simply is too much to process. And that my habit of multitasking has created a game that is an infinite landscape of whack a mole with seemingly no levels and no foreseeable experience bar.

Am I having fun? Of course, I am. Am I learning things? Sure I am. Am I reflecting? I think I have been all this time. Am I in awe? I guess in some senses I am and am not.

When all is said and done, this is just how things are. Strange, disaffected and surreal.

And most importantly, loud.

So the day after flying seven hours ahead into the future, I think I maybe slept 45 minutes. And I looked it. Not that I don’t look normally. But I definitely looked at myself in the mirror and shrieked visibly in horror. I made it to Goes in the Netherlands around 11:30 local time which had me at about four thirty in the morning Central. I slept maybe another hour and a half then kept myself up until 10 p.m. local time.

The next day I was somewhat adjusted but we were playing a gig in Eindhoven that night. And that had us coming back at around six in the morning local time. When I got back here I passed out waking up around eight a.m. central time and three o’clock in the afternoon Netherlands time.

Its somewhat interesting only that if you look at circadian rhythms and jet lag, they generally say it takes about a day per time difference to readjust. I guess they gather that thats if you treat your body normally. Which I seriously haven’t under the circumstances.

Truth be told, today is about the first day that I feel somewhat normal which incidentally puts me about seven or so days since I landed in Holland. All the typical symptoms have worn a bit away as I write this. Considering parts of this entry were written earlier on in the week, it may seem like I’m completely manic depressive. To some that may just seem rather normal.

I’ve been rocking the exercycle with some weird hand jive to keep my cardio sorted. There isn’t too much in the way of vegan edibles that I can eat around these parts but I’ve got a kitchen so it saves the day. Besides the gigs, I’m mostly just being lazy and hanging out making tracks and learning things like sidechaining in Logic.

And therein lies the lack of observation involved to make an interesting travelogue. Its not that I haven’t seen or experienced some weird shit. Its that I can’t mentally process any of it due to the extreme lack of focus. I’d much rather sit on the couch and play ninjatown or try to learn conversational japanese.

The later has been far more interesting to me in concept. While I still love the idea of playing video games, its mostly a conceptual experience now and not a practice. I often find myself wondering exactly what was the point of me wasting twenty or thirty odd minutes frantically fumbling for mastery. Whereas, learning something like japanese might actually prove useful at some lame party or while watching a bevy of exploitation titles that sit in my queue at the moment.

You would assume that I would be trying to learn Dutch since I’m here for an extended period. Being the lazy american I am, I have mostly relied on that most Dutch people will speak English reluctantly at first. And they are often very polite about it. But I love Japan particularly even if I’ve never been there. And sometimes you just have to go with the flow of what you know or would like to know.

Everyone I’ve hung out with pretty much speaks Dutch first and foremost aside from Frank and a couple of other people. Its actually sometimes relaxing hanging out in a room where you don’t really have to say much. There’s no pressure to be maintain a dialog. Occasionally, questions will be asked in English and you merely just say a couple of random things and thats that. But for the most part when people do talk to you, you can tell they are making an honest effort to communicate.

I haven’t done much in the way of the inner spacial exploration, if you know what I mean. A friend is rolling through with some prepackaged gifts at some point next week. I’m sure I’ll have some time to sample those wares and circle off planet for a few. I’m not so sure in this lagged state of mind its for the best right now anyways.

Amongst everyone I’ve met, everyone has been super cool. Got to hang out with Vindictiv again from Dj Bigband of which you should check the videos. Conceptually, those guys are taking it way past the level and its better if you just have a look see.

The trip has mostly been about music whether thats playing tunes, recording, learning, or just networking. And for that, maybe its best that the entries have been sparse and few between. Its mostly gigs from here on out and its been more of a tour than I actually thought it would be. I picked up two extra nights and an extended stay through christmas. I’m sure I’ll have more than a couple of stories to tell after its all over.

For now, its me and the D with Dylan and Tech Itch in Brussels tonight, thunderdome and smackdown on Saturday with me actually dj’ing the later, and Rotterdam and Germany next week.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you step off the curb at approximately the right state of mind, it feels like you are launching yourself off the edge of the gravity well to the tune of Gayaneh’s Adagio. The asphault in God’s piss ladened sleet weeps salty tears. And you stare blankly in your best hand-picked vintage flannel aware that light years from here it will all be the same. Bent faces, bent vision and bent smiles in a different time zone.

And mostly you hope and pray for the silence and the impossibility of flight and of movement. Longing for the automatic progress and distance. Gasping for succession in a vacuum where seconds feel like days… and where days feel like light years. A time alone twiddling your thumbs to rudimentary time trials and strategicly placed critical hits. A place where the stagnacy of winter doesn’t make one feel as if they are drowning in an icy lake.

It exactly two days before you separate yourself from your home or what you have accepted as your place of origin. And you don’t know exactly why, but you already miss it. The blankness and the futility you have accustomed yourself to that comes with the welcome haggard face of the season. The persona of the routine you have settled in stares at you longingly from across the room, sitting next to the suitcase that lies half-packed. The cats have perched next to it, purring silently in the dead air that it breathes.

It stares at you accusingly with its legs crossed, staring at the broken hardwood floors. It knows on the other side of the globe awaits another. It assures you of it, wallowing within its own abuse. Nothing changes on the other side of the universe.

And when you come back, you will come back to it. It will sit disapprovingly on the couch. You will drop your bags and the cats will scatter. And it will slowly break down. The distance will shrink and you will be swallowed in its arms once again, in all its loving futility.

Stepping from the curb to the street, it stays with you. The fact that a city is a city and a street is a street; regardless of how many cobbles or how smooth. That somewhere in some grand design you are locked within an orbit. And that this orbit shifts through planes and dimensions to keep your wheels spinning perpetually. This after all is your life whether you choose to accept it or not.

Two days from now you will be weightless, closer to Jupiter than you’ve ever been.

187 LOCKDOWN

I’ve never been one to settle down all that much. When I did settle, it wasn’t as though things felt stagnant for me. But I did appreciate the fear that comes with it. Its the same fear you see reflected back at you from a glossy screen when you see the lives of people you knew almost by force. Its like faces in the prison yard. It reminds you only of a time where any sort of complex or bent thought was met with outright savagery.

I’ve told the story over and over again to people of how I was almost expelled from High School. I remember sitting in a room for days on end for a week long in school suspension. Partially, it was because no one knew what to do with me. It was the same room where the fuck ups that smoked outside during break sat idly. Where a kid with a near 4.0 grade average was being detained for of all things publishing a magazine.

DUTCH MASTERS

No one back then would have ever known that I was doing it. Because for the most part, it was a lame little rag. The kind of thing you’d probably burn for heat or use for toilet paper. It was pure masturbatory prose almost akin to what you might or might not be reading now. In some ways, it was clearly to blame on my high school literary teacher who in the end I think saved me from any permanent exile. Oddly, I’m not sure that was so much of a favor in hindsight.

You see, my parents wanted to keep me away from drugs, desperately. They heard stories. Kids smoking marijuana in the bathroom or od’ing on their way to civics. Gangs, rampant sex and violence. All these things that might actually mold me into something of an unproductive being. And to their credit, where ever it was we were living at the time was subject to a large amount of white trash.

So it became necessary to put me into a private high school. One that preferably mirrored closely the protestant upbringing that I all but pretty much ignored. And thats what sent me to a Dutch reformed school entitled Chicago Christian.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

So I packed in a bus everyday for an hour bus ride to Palos Heights with a range of kids from sophomores without cars all the way down to 4th graders. I made a lot of friends on that bus mostly with kids a couple of grades lower than I was. And we all talked about crazy shit. Shit that their parents wouldn’t approve of. Dungeons and Dragons, Skinny Puppy, Rakim, you name it. And thats where my magazines made their first mistake getting into the hands of these kids.

Never mind the fact that I distributed them all over the place back then. If you allowed your kid to set foot in a local record store, you’d more than likely see a copy sitting on the floor somewhere. In fact, in the end some of those same kids swore they got them there though their parents clearly knew they were lying.

And so it came to be that I sat in front of the school board, a quiet and shy little kid who no one thought did much of anything. They read lines back at me. Asked me if I was on heroin. Asked me if I worshipped Satan. Asked me a bunch of things. And I just shrugged. Of course I didn’t. I just like to write.

NOW THEY’VE GOT ME IN A CELL

And so I remember sitting in this room with a stray cot working on my homework for the day, somewhat relieved that I didn’t have to speak or talk to anyone. I’m sure somewhere in there it could be construed that I enjoyed being punished for being subversive. But really, I had no grasp on what it was exactly that I did wrong. I was simply trying to be a productive member of some fucked up social ranking. You had kids playing football. Kids worshipping Jesus after school. Kids in the drama club. Geeks in the chess club. And then you had people like me that no one really quite understood. Not even the kids finger painting in the art studio.

So I look back at these people with my ugly ass mugshot and my ridiculous lifestyle and see it like a blotch against a clear sky. Like some mutant albatross shitting from the sky in a tourist photo. And I just have to wonder to myself absently. No real purpose or intent. Just wonder. Like wide fucking eyed horror and awe intermixed.

PIECES OF FLAIR

Abnormality and quirkiness are something that I’ve thrived on for years. Every couple of cycles, I become obsessed with a new fetish. Right now, its girls with glasses, reused flannels, anodized velocity rims, stoner doom and exotic teas. Its got a different name every five or ten years and I wonder why I consistently siphon off of it. Even in those little tags and badges, its not always the genuine article. You can hang out in a room with a bunch of people who have the same fetishes and quickly see just how scarily different those people actually are. In a couple of years, when the waves and paradigms shift, you see them drifting away from you… pointing and laughing as they float.

Years later you stare at a picture online and you see just how different you all look or act. And thats when it really starts to scare you; this lack of permanence. I begin to wonder sometimes if I’m just constantly shifting and fidgeting. If its really growth or just a constant spinning of the wheels.

Between you and me, I’ve come to accept it as growth. I may have grown into some weird c list monster island character never before seen on US soil. But thats me. Baby Godzooky. Not quite terrifying enough to spark fear into Lower Manhattan but still ugly enough to hang out in the seedier parts of town. A midget man in suit flailing his arms across white picket fence dreams everywhere.

Sometimes I feel like a viral marketing experiment gone rogue. I wouldn’t quite put it on par with any delusions such as the infamous Truman Show Syndrome but it does have its moments. Any public conversation that starts out “So I was reading your blog…” usually makes me feel somewhat funny.

Its my own fault and I should be happy anyone actually reads it. But when it comes down to it, I still feel sometimes that I need to blog more carefully. Or at least when I do blog off the cuff, it feels sometimes like I have to dedicate a whole new entry to reclarifying things that I’ve said previously. Normally this would just be some kind of chest puffing of me thinking my readership is way more than it really is. But when you hear the name of the tea you just drank five or six times in one night out of other people’s mouth… well that is scary.

And its with that that I almost think my dear friend at a certain establishment deserves some type of raise or promotion. Because in some bizarre marketing ploy, I’ve becoming the willing host of some street advertisement plague. I’m a walking commercial for a line of teas. Other times I’m a billboard for American Apparel flannels. And yes, its all because I can’t resist the charms of excellent customer service.

I’M JUST BEING HONEST

I know for the most part I put myself through it. It pains me to say sometimes that I being too open and honest gets me in trouble. I swear its only for entertainment purposes. How many times do I have to tell myself that… or other people for that matter? Its oddly surreal. When you start to get feedback from people in public. “Hey I was reading your blog and I totally think you should do this about this particular situation.”

You can’t really complain about it because its part of the trappings of making your personal life public whatever your reasoning for doing so. Thats like complaining about putting out a record and actually selling over your desired amount to be sold. Why did you bother even putting out a record in the first place? Its comes with the territory is all I’m saying. Sometimes you just have to learn how to shrug it off. It could easily be solved by quitting the concept altogether. But then how much fun would that be.

So to embrace it, I’m sitting at Intelligentsia on a sunday morning drinking a steaming pot of fresh Golden Needles hammering away on my Apple computer hunkered down in my vintage ‘select‘ flannel swaddled in my Boris tshirt with my SE fixed gear lager parked outside. How much more annoying and transparent could I be?

DRUMS OF DEATH

So as to why I’m sitting here nursing tea other than the more obvious reasons has to do with a certain incident at five thirty this morning. Now I’ll be the first to admit we’ve done some annoying shit over the last year at Dungeon Kids. I don’t know how anyone could withstand Christopher Cross “Sailing” blaring loudly at 2:30 in the morning. But when it comes down to about 3 a.m. thats when its time to shut down. Unfortunately, we have gone to 4:30 on occasions. But for the most part, we try to taper things down around then.

Music in the middle of the night is something I can’t really say bothers me all too much. And even though I slept for complete shit due to my neighbor’s party, I have to tolerate it. I’d be a hypocrite otherwise. But when you start to have an impromptu bongo session at 5:30 in the morning… I’m sorry.

Sunrise bongos are never fucking cool. Ever.

Thankfully a couple of swift bangs on the wall shut that shit up instantly. I had to endure some loud burps and lack of motor coordination. But again, we’ll get them back the next Yacht Rock party in January. Zimmer’s Steely Dan collection will make sure of it.

SKYLARKING

Friday night was some sort of whirlwind tour in the zero degree. I ended up at Skylark again with Zim and hooked up with Larry and a couple of people from Thursday night. We took a cab to lava where I like did the quickest emcee set ever. I say that only because I’m so used to having to sit around for five hours. A thirty minute jaunt on the mic is actually kind of refreshing. Combine it with some jazzercise and you’ve got a full workout.

We bounced off from there to Sonotheque for some electro thing. I can only say that I unfortunately did dance to “Watch My Feet” of which I am none to proud. I am also not proud of the fact that I was caught looking like pure white trash at the very time they were playing a Journey Dancerock remix. Call it horrid synchronicity. Call it fate. Call it bored on a Friday night with nothing official to do. Call it the ‘life of entro.’

LIVING MY LIFE LIKE THE LIFE OF REILLY

Its starting to become no joke when I say that all of this is research. I’ve been assembling a lot of bits of prose together and character sketches over the last couple of months. Mainly I write small passages around certain archetypes or pockets of social circles. If there is one thing I need to divorce myself from in order to do that, its my own bias and perspective. Writing in someone else’s voice and understanding someone else’s voice are two components.

Arguably its not entirely hard. Its all about recognizing where the twain meets which seemingly is never. Actors do it all the time. Rappers woefully as well which makes them mediocre actors at best. When a persona or a moniker is actually created, it becomes very important to keep it fenced in. Any time you step out of that brand is when you either are entering a brilliant marketing ploy or a garbage chute to career hell.

Persona creation in writing requires a great deal of soul searching. Its hard enough to find your own voice, let alone someone else who either partially exists… or not at all. Part of writing consistently is both exercising your ability to craft prose as well as your own inner dialog. Once you have that down pat, you can play around with hearing how it might sound out of another vehicle. Like playing a record through a wah pedal and superfuzz bigmuff or dropping a guitar string below E. Your own signature will still be there subliminally… but its important to let things and forms speak naturally.

So to write a dozen characters that are all pretty much me in some way isn’t very interesting. Its borderline egotistical and psychotic. Thats blogging basically of which I am perfectly aware of the trappings. Daily blogging helps satiate that carnal need. But if you really want to play around in a fantasy world… use the tools, concepts, and archetypes as legos to assemble some sort of new subversive message… you really need to see people for who and why they are without judging them.

WAY OF THE SUB

I know why I don’t choose to do things. Some decisions are easier than others and thats partially what I’ve been subjected to and reared within. Our inner damage is what shapes us to be who we are. I’d venture to say even from my own experience that we all cradle our damage affectionately. Who knows why. Everyone I meet has molded around it… kind of like a construction worker who packs a half rotting sandwich in drywall and seals it over. You never see it past the surface for the most part. Sometimes they’re just that crafty. Others you can tell it stinks from a mile away… and you really just want to tell them to mow it all down… just to get rid of that goddamn sandwich.

If there is one thing I’ve seen in passing its a lot of unhappy people. Maybe I see it better because in my own life thats my constant personal struggle. Its amplified because I know it so well. I’ve got my own sandwiches stuck up in my celotex. We all know about them. You can identify them like Pokemon via RSS tags.

But its hard to talk about other people’s damage without pointing fingers. And sometimes, thats the last thing you want to do. Call someone out. Because it doesn’t really serve any purpose. So you want to create this alternate reality where you bend the light and shape clones and doubles just so you can say what you really want to say. Maybe as a warning… maybe as a secret love letter to things you find both beautiful and startling at the same time.

Maybe as a subliminal kick in the ass to whoever is out there about to stuff their half eaten parmesan chicken between some baseboards.

So one of my not so secret crushes has successfully subjugated any semblance of will that I have leftover when it comes to my morning tea. I thought I was doing well resisting but thats pretty much because she’s never been there for weeks on end. And yes, I know its pathetic and pitiful that I’d even notice. But then she drops down the Golden Needles. And suddenly, I’m all batshit insane again. Thanks lady.

To her credit, this tea is fucking amazing although its hard to tell if I’m just biased. Of which I can assure you I am completely. Its a black tea with a crisp buttery finish and a hint of spice. It also seems to pack a fuckload of caffeine of which is adding to my exuberance. On a cold as shit day like today and a Friday to boot, its a welcome shift in mood. I can’t help she has amazing taste in tea and the fact that she makes me smile, quite often.

SHOEGAZING

As psychotic as this whole experience may sound and as much as I like to play up the neuroticism in song and prose, its actually pretty healthy. When I think to how backwards this process, and by process I mean ‘healing,’ its not so backwards. At least not in my own language and context. Everyone knows I operate on some broken wiring. I don’t think of it that way honestly. I’m eccentric. I can’t deny that.

When it comes to this process of interpersonal relationships I think I seem largely retarded to most of my friends. I actually had a rather long discussion with my friends girlfriend about this. And we come down to the analysis that it is just a natural process. You get involved in a massively serious relationship for ten years. Its natural to adjust to the shock of change in almost schoolboy fascination. You are a total neophyte.

That the first time someone you find insanely attractive says something particularly nice to you, you respond in your head with a burst of white light. That the difference in which you respond and react to that is a precarious slope between cute and moderately to extremely creepy. Sometimes you just need to relax and let the universe do what it needs to do.

DOMESTIC DISPUTES

Suffice it to say when you are involved in something stable, you become almost wrapped in the jelly in some hive like structure. You become a unit. Sometimes thats not a bad thing. I honestly still think its a beautiful thing. When it works. But being wrapped in a poison for years on end, no matter how tasty the poison is, its still a lifeless coffin. I’m not saying I was stuck in a coffin for ten years. Though its of particular interest that I felt subconsciously as suffocated as I think the other party visibly was.

My friend’s theory that most people in relationships often complain that the thing they miss most is the lack of options seems particularly poignant now. I think there are many different levels of that and I think some people mix their own damage with the core of that philosophy. There is an exploration at the root there that I think can be a very healthy thing.

When you are single and by nature choosing to be alone for personal development, you are allowed to grow at your own pace. There are a lot of differing opinions and almost stark contrasts if divided among the sexes. Part of growing is finding your own voice and answers. Someone asked me recently if I even knew what I actually wanted in terms of a relationship. I kind of didn’t know how to answer that question. Thats like someone asking me “Hey what do you want out of life?” I’m still working that one out in my head.

SMALL TALK

The other day I got into a random conversation with a girl in a store. I swear maybe a month or two ago I’d just answer in some stoic manner and go about my business. But ever since lately, its become this drive within me to break out of that. Like oh my fucking god, what happens if I actually have a normal conversation with a girl that I happen to find physically attractive? I get shit from a fair amount of friends that I’m horrible at asking for numbers. Or that I’m not particularly direct. Or that there’s some mysterious time window that I have to adhere to.

I kind of wonder if part of the reason I’m not so direct is that it doesn’t come naturally yet. And recognizing that is key. One of the trickiest things to recognize is why if its so easy, don’t you just do it. And to be honest, its hard to know the answer to that question. Maybe somewhere in my head, I’ve adjusted to being single at least for the time being.

TO THE CENTER

All I know is that I do enjoy talking to people. And I do enjoy talking to girls. As retarded as it is, it makes me smile when I meet one that I like in some way or another. I do my little obsession routine with dreamy glazed over eyes at work and to my friends. I act annoying and people start seeing me smile for once. Its a form of silent praise or appreciation. It makes me feel like I actually have some feelings. That deep inside I really love life of which I really do.

This is all well, good and innocent. And might I add fun. Its a welcome break from self analysis and brooding. I enjoy all the sorts of funny feelings it evokes. It makes me realize that this is why people like being single. Its exciting in some ways as long as you know why you are.

Part of being single and alone is linked to self discovery and self connection. All the little annoying things that I do or that I’m interested in, I no longer have to hide. I don’t have to tone down or mute things to impress someone. And to be completely honest, that one has been a huge one. Its getting to the very center of your being.

I’M JUST HANGING OUT

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are single that don’t approach the state constructively. And even though I haven’t gotten much of a vibe as to how many people out there are like that, I’m sure the more people I talk to will give me a better idea. It seems like sometimes I may come to a scary realization if I start collecting data. And maybe secretly I don’t want to know either way.

Thats all the heavy shit that I don’t particularly want to deal with. I really just want to sit and listen to records. I want to drink tea penned with exotic names and write about my feelings. I want to ride my bike around and romanticize that its something spiritual. And I want to wear ridiculous clothes and spit odd slang and jokes. I want to look at art and watch weird movies. I want to listen to every single Dead Meadow record in one single sitting. I want to travel around and write weird notes on paper to reiterate to myself what it is that I miss about home.

And I really just want to hang out and not think about all the weird damage in people’s heads… including my own. I kind of really just want to smile more. And it seems to be happening on its own lately at the weirdest times of day. I don’t want to expect it. Its better when it just happens. And I don’t want to think about why.

Maybe there’s something wrong with that. Maybe I’m not following some rule book somewhere. Maybe I really don’t care in the end. Maybe for once, I’m not going to over think or over analyze unless its entertaining in some way to do so.

Next week I leave for the Netherlands until Christmas for a much long needed nineteen day vacation from work. I’m mostly going to hang out with Frank, Nils, and the crew out there. I need to get away from everything to appreciate it all more in context.

I also need to mellow out, marinate a bit and go on an adventure before I hibernate until Spring.

I’m pretty sure Chicago will still be here when I get back.

Eugene McDaniels is one angry mother fucker and it shows quite exceptionally on the full length “Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse.”  Its this nine minute plus opus that had me fighting back some tears on my traditional sunday morning old man walk.

I can’t lie that whatever that guy is tapping into isn’t very happy.  And I also have to say I admire it like a motherfucker.  Its both so easy and so fucking hard to listen to.  The whole record is fucking bitter; a refreshing change from the most of the wide eyed acid love going on at that time.  There is an equal amount of hippie jargon that sweeps through.  But know that McDaniels was simply at the rotating around the core, slipping astrological science nonchalantly in tunes like “Lovin’ Man.”  At the same time screaming “Goddamn” so forcefully on so many tunes that you’d swear a bunch of white people in the studio were probably visibly startled.

If you are into old soul, psychedelic, or sociopolitical music, you owe it to yourself to find a copy.

Otherwise, peep Old No. 7 again…