manwithoutaband

still alive

2009-02-01T10:09:00.005-07:00

I don't know how long they let these things go without someone making changes, and I wanted to keep it running for use someday, so here's a short entry. When there is more reason to use it (i.e.-publicity for book, etc...) it will be back in action.

Hey, it worked!

2005-10-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I couldn't get this to work the other day when I tried it. Anyway, a picture from our trip to Escalante and the Petrified Forest. So while I'm at it, this picture from Colonial Williamsburg (the hottest day of our trip to the East Coast Last July) makes me laugh.

Don't you just love Magnolia trees? They were great for forts and climbing when I was a kid in Georgia.

Connecticut? Rhode Island? Final installment.

2005-10-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

author's note: Okay, this is the last installment for that part of my Karaoke Summer Tour last year. Sorry I've been so delinquent on posting. Things have been pretty busy lately. Anyway, this last installment introduces you to the cast of characters at The Windjammer in Misquamicut, Connecticut. And it's pretty long (six pages, double spaced), so you might want to take it in small doses.

“What a fascinating experiment is man. So far advanced from our tree-dwelling ancestors, yet in so many ways, still living in those very branches. I wonder if Darwin would have changed some of his theories if he could see us now. After all, you can take the monkey out of the jungle…”
bh duk

I believe we met Scott and Arizona first. Scott and Arizona were a couple in their late thirties (maybe early forties) still holding true to the favorite times in their lives and who drove up from Connecticut every weekend in their VW bus with their two dogs for karaoke and camping.

Scott had been a rocker, his heyday probably in the Eighties. Sporting a semi-mullet thinning on the top, a goatee and a belly that confirmed that beer in middle age didn’t burn off as quickly, Scott had been in a handful of bands over the years, but now owned his own mobile karaoke set-up. He traveled with his own collection of karaoke CD’s. I’m pretty sure the first song he did was “Workin’ for the Weekend.” Maybe “Takin’ Care of Business,” but you get the idea.

Arizona was from, well… you guessed it, and we guessed that with her own performance past, it probably wasn’t her real name. If I were to venture another guess, from her age and obvious influences, Arizona had an older sister who was probably a hippy, and whom she held in high esteem, but Arizona grew up a little later. Accompanying the braids and thin dreds were streaks of various bright colored hair. Dressed (and appearing) younger than her years, Arizona was fun to watch, and a pleasure to listen to. She had the same performer’s intensity of Scott (again, Man Without a Band rings so true), but she had the skills to back it up. Scott was a little rougher around the edges.

In his defense, Arizona might have said that he’d had a cold, but she had quite a few good things to say about Scott. If there was one thing obvious, these two loved each other and enjoyed being together.

“Scott can be sick as a dog,” Arizona said at one point, “but show him a microphone and he’s all better.”

Another couple who seemed to enjoy each other, but in a more traditional male/female relationship were Paul and Tina. With appearances more clean cut than Scott and Arizona (even if in a more Eighties style), Paul and Tina spoke with that great Rhode Island/New England accent that I could listen to all day. I don’t remember how they earned a living, although I believe Paul was attempting painting or some similar artistic endeavor on the side. He gave me a card consisting solely of a picture of one of his prints. I think it was a horse… with strong tones of blue, I believe, but I’ve misplaced it.

What I do remember is that Tina loved karaoke, and that, out of support (or often a feeling that he needed to protect her), Paul came along.

“I don’t sing,” he said. And not like how some people will tell you they don’t sing because they’re shy, or that they don’t sing because they’re being modest. The feeling I got was that, while some people can be goaded into it with a few drinks, Paul had never even considered getting up on the stage.

But Tina sure did. With a voice capable of hitting the lower ranges, I especially remember her unexpectedly sultry rendition of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” I believe it was actually this performance that prompted Brenna and me to take an interest in the couple. Otherwise, as opposed to the standout appearances of Scott and Arizona, Paul and Tina would have blurred into the periphery with the rest of the Windjammer patrons. And that would’ve been a shame, because Tina knew her karaoke. She rambled off a list of the best places in the area, telling us why the Windjammer was “just okay” with their limited selection, which was better than many I’d seen, and their “decent” sound system. She lowered her voice when she told us about a bar in a neighboring town that had the best set up, “but it’s all blacks. And there’s not a single one of them that can’t sing. Paul doesn’t like me to go there, but if you get a chance, you two should go.”

I laughed, trying to picture this little white girl who looked like a cross between Laverne and Shirley holding her own in a bar full of soul, and I wondered why she lowered her voice. There wasn’t a black person in sight. Maybe it was a sore point between her and Paul.
Conversation bounced back and forth between the six of us as the evening progressed, the focus changing as one or another would get up to perform. I spent a little time with Scott, perusing his personal collection of CD’s while Brenna talked with Arizona. At some point I got up and did a roughed-up version of Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” (I always forget about the higher parts in that one), then conversation resumed. Paul told me about his art while Tina performed a song. Couple more drinks. Groups rearranged again. Arizona asked me if Brenna and I were a couple while Scott sang another hard rock ballad. Brenna and I would regroup and share the information we’d learned about our new friends. It was great. This exemplified exactly the purpose of this trip (or at least as far as my accountant was concerned), and the timing couldn’t have been much better when my name was called to perform the song that got this whole crazy thing started in the first place. Did I tell you about the night at the Blue Kat in Cedar City, the guy with lip cancer who still came out every week to sing and play his harmonicas? I’ll have to check back and see.

“Pablo, you’re up next!” the DJ in black called over the microphone. I always use “Pablo.” It’s like a stage name for me. I dunno’ why, exactly. Maybe it gives me that extra bit of courage to get up on stage, get outside of myself, if only for a few minutes.

Arizona asked me which song I was doing as I took another drink from my Seven and Seven and stood up.

“Neil Diamond,” I said. “Holly Holy.”

“Oooh, I love that one,” she said. Tina chimed in to the same effect, and next thing you know, I had backup singers. And if you want to talk about feeling like a superstar, here is the moment, having the two best female singers in the house getting your back.

We stumbled at first (hey, we didn’t get to practice), getting about 30 seconds into the song before asking the DJ to start over. We were gonna’ do this one right. And do it right, we did. The girls were great, and I belted it out. This may have been the first time I had performed the song since that night in Utah, but I knew it was a new favorite and I let it all out. As a big Neil Diamond fan, I considered it a tribute to Neil to make it my own, my personal rendition coming out sounding like a little of the man himself mixed with Eddie Vedder, and maybe a more serious, soulful Jack Black (circa “High Fidelity”).

We finished up to much acclaim (or at least that’s how I remember it) as Jenna was called up to the stage.

Jenna and Matt. They were in love, too, but they expressed it in an entirely different manner. More of that “young lust” kind of love. From what I gathered, Jenna and Matt were still newlyweds, and this particular evening Matt had chosen to celebrate his birthday at the Windjammer with his new wife and his parents. In their mid-twenties at best, we had already seen some of Jenna and Matt this evening. For Matt it was a forgettable monotone performance with a few flashes of energy when he would hit the chorus and actually hit a note (am I a karaoke snob? It’s okay, you can tell me.). For Jenna, it was a strange display that she chose to put on for her new husband.

The deejay had announced that Jenna had something special for Matt. Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe it just started with a solo performance on the dance floor loosely dedicated to Matt, but in a way, for the benefit of all. A mix between a college dance squad routine and a, well… you know (“do they have any, umm, clubs around here?” I asked Brenna.), it was an interesting few minutes of thumping bass/techno/something while she slid, snapped, whirled and grinded over the dance floor. Okay, a little strange, especially considering the fact that Matt’s relatively conservative parents were mixed up in the festivities, as well, but this was just the tit (oops, tip) of Jenna’s iceberg.

Cake entered the scene at some point in the evening. Matt center stage, holding it in his lap, while Jenna danced around him with a faux fur black stole. At some point the cake ended up on the floor, maybe she moved it for easier access to his lap. Next thing you know there’s a foot in it by mistake, then somebody belly flops on top of it, and as good natured chaos ensues, I’m reminded of the table slide from the first karaoke night of this whole crazy trip almost a month earlier.

[Footnote: the swamper who came out to mop up the mess was a young kid, also probably in his early twenties. Wearing a spotted white tee-shirt and jeans damp from the tasks of keeping a bar clean and apparently known around these parts as the “K Master,” he appeared on stage a couple times later in the evening with his dish rag slung over one shoulder as he rapped some of the latest hits, including an impressive Eminem.]

By the time Jenna performs the Divinyl’s “I Touch Myself,” complete with a soft-porn-esque physical interpretation of the lyrics, no one is especially surprised… okay, I was still a little surprised she was putting on this show with Matt’s parents in attendance, but even they seemed completely at home, stepping into the entryway between the pool tables and the main bar to watch for a moment before returning to their game (although Dad lingered a moment longer), and I wonder what conversations are going on behind closed doors. I dated an exotic dancer a few years back, but, while my parents wouldn’t have necessarily been surprised to hear this fact, I never told them what she did for a living. Not to say that Jenna was a stripper. Maybe she just took one of those classes for women that I’ve been hearing about. It’s empowering, I guess.

Anyway (in other words-“To skip past the minutia which I probably wouldn’t remember correctly anyway,”), it was a helluva’ evening overall. While I had more songs turned in, I don’t think I performed again. Probably for the best. Leave ‘em with a high note. Definitely a good thing they didn’t call me up for “Purple Rain.” I’ve tried it since my performance in the Chinese karaoke bar in Honolulu without nearly the quality I believed I possessed in Hawaii.

As things wound down, Arizona tried to convince us that we should come back the next day for karaoke on the beach, but, much as it sounded like a good time, I didn’t anticipate seeing them again. Farewells were made, last drinks finished, and Brenna and I exited the Windjammer. We spotted Scott and Arizona in their bus, sitting in the parking lot with two dogs obviously excited to see them (for some reason, I want to say that they were Bassett Hounds. Funny image, eh?), probably rolling up a little nightcap. I wondered where their paths would trail off to on this particular evening and was tempted to suggest to Brenna that we ask, but instead (and possibly wisely) I raised a hand to them and wished them well as we continued across the asphalt to Brenna’s Honda, and back to the beach house.

THE BIG NEWS!

2005-09-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

I heard back from my editor and will be starting back to work on my book!

Just kidding. Well, kind of. I did actually hear back from my editor, and I'm really excited about the direction I will be taking "The Imaginings" next. It's been a little frustrating lately, but I have a renewed energy after hearing back the editor (and relieved to hear that I still have a confident agent even though our year "contract" has lapsed.)

But the real big news is... I'm getting married!

It's not happening as soon as it sounds, but I like the sound of it better than "I'm engaged." Kinda like that whole "fiance" thing.

Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know, Jennifer and I have known each other since high school (a couple years older than me, I actually had a little crush on her). In the haze of our early college years, we somehow managed to never run into each other in the small Southern Utah town (at least that we can recall). We both tried our hands in marriage (separately, of course), Jennifer a bit longer than me, for those of you who remember mine (I barely do). At some point, I stopped going to school and left Utah to find my way in the world, returning a little over eight years later to help the family biz, and I saw Jennifer at the house of some other friends of mine from the high school years. I had given up on finding anyone in Cedar City, ticking off the time I would be here, and she had given up on finding anyone, period. It only got better from there, and on my birthday, I decided the best gift she could give me would be to say that she would be my wife.

[Funny footnote: When I told my good friend/shaman, Zim Broadway, that I was going to ask her on my birthday, he laughed and told me that it was an awfully big present asking her to give me her whole life.]

Anyway, that's the abbreviated version (I'm also planning on copying this to an email to all my friend's and family who don't see my blog), but to sum it up, Jennifer is absolutely the perfect woman for me, and while I agree that it seems strange that I had to leave Utah, spend several years in Montana, travel around for a couple more, only to return to my hometown and meet the woman with whom I'd want to spend the rest of my life, I also know that it might not have worked out had it happened any sooner. As I'm fond of telling her, I had to come all this way to be ready to love her like she deserved to be loved.

The picture below is from my birthday dinner at my parents' place the day after I asked her. Okay, actually, I'm having difficulty figuring out how to post pictures now for some reason. So you'll have to wait.

Thanks Missuz J

2005-08-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

It does seem kind of silly, now, but I think someone else on this blog network said that deep down inside, we all really do like to talk about ourselves. And this challenge served as a pleasant distraction. So, without further adieu (that should've been on my list)...

7 Things I plan to do before I die:

1- Support a family (or at least contribute more than I do now) off my writing, which leads to…
2- Per our pact, buy a Harley for myself, and then one for my older brother.
3- Go to Europe, Central and South America
4- Probably Asia, too. And Australia
5- Stop smoking entirely.
6- Raise a child (I’m already partially involved in this, but it would be fun to try from the start)
7- Most importantly, make my girl happy until my last breath.

7 Things I can do:

1- Ride a bike with no hands for long distances while drinking tea from my travel mug.
2- Barbecue.
3- Recite most of “Raising Arizona.”
4- Sing a mean David Bowie, Waylon Jennings, and Neil Diamond.
5- Get along in a crowd of strangers.
6- Listen.
7- Finally give my love to a woman who appreciates and reciprocates.

7 Things I cannot do:

1- Not finish a book once I’ve started.
2- Easily admit when I’m wrong.
3- Play basketball.
4- Pull off most of Led Zeppelin (Robert Plant really could hit those high notes).
5- Do anything more mechanical under the hood than change the oil.
6- Watch “Chicago” again.
7- Imagine life without Jennifer.

7 Things I say most often:

1- Jiminy Christmas!
2- hmm. (as a way of avoiding comment)
3- Oh, for Hell’s sake.
4- Okay, then. (see #3 from Things I can do)
5- Hair of the dog
6- whatchoo’ talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?
7- I love you (glad to be able to use this one more than just with my parents)

7 Things that attract me to the opposite sex:

Well, I basically just like the opposite sex, in general, and have dated a few different brands and styles of women, but having finally found someone I feel truly compatible with, I’ll change this to

7 Things I love about Jennifer:

While she has other, more-refined tastes in these first three arenas, Jennifer loves
1- Beer,
2- Harder music, and
3- while she may watch through her fingers, she likes horror movies.
4- She has an artist’s soul.
5- Laughter. Lots of laughter.
6- Three words. best… sex… ever.
7- She’s just different enough from me to keep it interesting.

7 Celebrity crushes:

1- When I was younger, I really had a thing for Meg Ryan, but figuring that whole Dennis Quaid marriage was solid (oops), I gave it up. Since then, the only real celebrity crush I’ve had is on Fiona Apple.

7 People I’d like to do this list:

1- Pope Benedict XVI (do you think “become the Pope” would be on there?)
2- The President (although the “7 Things I can do” might be difficult)
3- God (there’s some serious comic potential in this one)
4- Albert Einstein (“Adaptation” anyone?)
5- Willie Nelson (mostly just for the 7 things he’d like to do before he dies)
6- I can’t think of anyone else, except for
7- My Tourjete. While unfortunately her new job won’t allow the continuance of her blogging (not that she minds that much, I believe, except for not being able to comment on others), I’d like to see her list. Maybe she’ll give it to me, and I’ll post it.

Patience, my friends

2005-08-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Old friends and new friends.

I just realized how long it had been since I posted (wow, how time flies) and wanted to let you all know that I will be back on Monday with either my Seven List (someone finally tagged me after I whined a little. I actually liked this one.) or the final installment from The Windjammer in Misquamicut.

I'm pleased to announce that I've finally started with my new schedule of writing first thing in the morning after Jennifer goes to work and before Kira gets up for school. It's a great time for the craft, with dawn just waking up and the world still quiet. So I'll probably be wrapping up the tales of my Summer Karaoke Tour soon (probably just in time to get back to editing my book). Just a little teaser... next stop after finishing in Connecticut is Montreal, possibly my worst karaoke experience.

Until then...

because we didn't take pictures

2005-08-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

author's note: This is another one for my girl, and as the title implies, I wrote it to keep the memories fresh from our trip to Montana and Idaho (three months ago?!).

because we didn't take pictures...

A full car from the very start.

Probably 500 CD’s (and no I-Pod), sleeping bags, pillows, clothes, collapsible chairs, my laptop, books we never found time to read, two empty Kettlehouse growlers, (add in two endtables on the trip home), and two cowboy hats fitting two people in love and on vacation.

Heidi and John’s back porch, Rattlesnake Creek rumbling through Greenough Park just beyond our visual senses.

Dancing to Tom Catmull at Sean Kelly’s.

dried peaches and olive cheese bread at the Farmer’s Market.

Sun. Thank God for the sun.

The weather in general. How perfectly fitting for each day.

Rock Creek. Ray and Marlene. Glad you finally met them. Crushing cans and shooting whiskey. Getting off with just a warning driving back into town. Do you think the peaches covered the whiskey smell?

sitting in the Kettlehouse, sampling the brews. The guy who said you had a great smile first. Unthreatened, I grinned at his comment, and he said the same about me. Ahh, hippy kids.

Tipu’s after a good walk through Caras Park and along the Clark Fork River.

Bald eagles, bison, blue heron and elk. Oh my.

Touring along the Salmon River into Idaho.

Zim.

The next day. The four mile hike to Gold Bug. Light rain running down my face, dropping off my nose. Low clouds drifting across the mountains like smoke. I knew walking behind you that I would follow you anywhere, and thought about our future adventures.

Finally we made it to Gold Bug. Only one other group of three, but they occupied the best spot so we stopped at one of the other pools.

(For the sake of decency and young readers, anything possibly offensive has been replaced with “hot springs.”)

Getting “hot springs” despite the other group, and then having to walk like that over to the better pool when it looked like they were leaving,
past the small group who had chosen not to get “hot springs.”
They just didn’t get the hot springs.
Probably the other car with Utah plates.

After they left, sitting in the pool, I can still picture you standing “hot springs” in all of your glory. You stretched your arms to the sky, your beautiful “hot springs” curved in silhouette by the steam, with jagged granite mountains rising behind.

The rocks and the rain, the bright green, passing scents of flowers and sage.

Do we dare? How couldn’t we dare?

“hot springs,” “Hot Springs,” “HOT Springs,” “HOTTTT SPRINGSSS!!”

The hike back, rain having tapered off, cool air, shards of rock soaked to brilliant colors, wildflowers everywhere.

Back in Challis, the Cowgirl Steak that I would’ve ordered if I thought I wouldn’t have got beat up.

“We just want to watch ‘Time Bandits,’ dammit!”

“YAHTZEE!” The new version developed on the drive back in between belting out Greg Brown and Barry Manilow.

And the most important memories of all.
You.
And me.
And falling more in love with each passing day.

Somewhere Out There is Film Footage- Connecticut? Rhode Island? Part Two

2005-08-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

author’s note: Hunter S. Thompson had a great quote. I saw it probably ten years ago, and remember it striking me, but could never remember it until just today (and I’m not even sure this is the right gist, but the combination sounded good when I heard it in my head… and if it’s not the Great Dr. Gonzo, well chalk one up for me. Anyway… ) fiction writer’s often tell stories that they wish had happened, and non-fiction writer’s often tell stories that they wish hadn’t happened. Hmmm. I really think that was the gist, but it doesn’t seem to truly apply to what I’m about to say, which is that I always interpreted that quote to mean there’s a fine line between the two genres.

Now that I think about it, it seems to go deeper than that. But hell, on the surface (and especially since I’m almost on track for “one year later” with this section of my travelogue) I’ll use it as a justification for my belief that not only is there considerable non-fiction in fiction writing, but it also swings the other way. But herein lays (lies? how appropriate) the difficulty. If relaying the past when there’s someone out there who may disprove it, do you venture forth, taking the risk that your creative liberties may not be taken for truth? Afterall, it isn’t only the memory of the storyteller which gets older. Do you think the authors of various books of the Bible had this same dilemma?

But I digress. This sure as hell isn’t the Bible, but I hope it makes a good yarn at least. At about four pages (including this lengthy author's note), Part Two sets the scene. I will actually be taking this section of my trip in three parts (the actual patrons of the Windjammer will need their own section). And now, back to Misquamicut, Rhode Island.

Everybody has a story.

Now to avoid the cliché, I’ll also say that not all of those stories are particularly interesting to me, but they’re stories, nonetheless, and I bet if you dig down past the surface stories (because we’ve all got surface stories, right? the ones we use at parties when someone asks us one of what my good friend/shaman, Zim Broadway, has referred to as the “So…” questions. “So… what do you do?” “So… where ya’ from?”) you’ll find some nugget of what makes that person different. The fingerprint of their soul, if you want to get metaphysical. And I’ve seen some interesting prints, let me tell you.

I’m sure it was Brenna’s idea to bring the video camera to the Windjammer, and to this day, I still debate whether or not I would’ve liked one along for my whole trip. Part of me says “definitely.” That way I could remember all the little details and understand all of the scribblings on crumpled slips of paper accompanied by song selections never performed that I collected in my computer case over two months.

But the other part of me says “not a chance.” After all, there’s that whole “memory imprinting” thing. More than a moment frozen in time, you get a sense for a place in your recollections, a combination of sights, smells, sounds, tastes and touch. Certain events stick out, but others merely paint the backdrop.

There’s also the fact that most people cease to be “real” when the camera is on them. It’s my whole problem which stemmed from “The Real World,” and has since spawned into the monster we call Reality TV. Granted, it’s closer to reality than a scripted sit-com, but you have to be some sort of actor to ever audition for one of those shows. People perform for the camera. Plain and simple.

And sometimes the best stories for me are the ones never told. Literally and figuratively. Sometimes someone has a wild, different look about them, but once you’ve spoken to them, you learn that their look is the most interesting thing they’ve got going. In many cases, I just like to be the observer of the life, the proverbial “fly on the wall,” catching just a glimpse of someone’s existence, a fragment of conversation or their interactions with others, and the story forms from there in my head.

So I probably wouldn’t have taken a video camera with me on the whole trip. Hell, I had a digital camera for all 10,000 miles of my Summer Tour and only came back with about fifteen pictures, mostly of the neighborhood where I was born. But it made the perfect addition to our night in Misquamicut. Maybe it’s something about Connecticut. Or Rhode Island. Or both. But the people we caught on tape were as real as they came, and when it came to karaoke, they had some stories to tell.

The Windjammer was a squat, single-story building with a flat roof situated modestly next to a hotel and somewhere near the coast (it was too dark to tell). The largest sign hung on the bar (bigger than the name itself) proclaimed the hours which karaoke was held, including the next day on the beach apparently. Tinted waist-high windows lined the front of the building, hiding the depth of the establishment. I was surprised to walk in and find a decent sized dance floor in front of a small stage where a blond woman in a black cowboy hat and black mini skirt ran the show, calling out the next performer through a mic attached to her headset.

The dance floor had an immediate draw, but despite a bungled attempt a little over a year earlier, romance had never blossomed from my friendship with Brenna, and even though I thoroughly enjoyed dancing with my woman friends (usually less pressure to actually look good), I thought it would be awkward this particular evening.

We set up camp at one of the many tables surrounding the dance floor, and I headed to the bar to get the first round. This serves to kill two birds. First, obviously, to get a drink, and second, you can always find a song list at the bar. It’s easier than asking to borrow someone else’s from their table. Then I started the process.

By this point on the trip, I had developed a system. While I got a couple drinks in me (more to ease the nerves than for courage. Even confidence can be accompanied by anxiety.), I scanned the book, choosing a handful of songs that I’d like to perform while keeping an ear to what others sang, judging the crowd, and trying to pick the order of my song list. If you’re an unfamiliar face in a local bar, you better start with something good if you want to get a chance to sing more than once. And it needs to be a crowd pleaser. You may sing the best Joan Baez since the singer herself, but in a room full of cowboy hats, you’re not going far.

This wasn’t a room full of cowboy hats, but I thought a good old country song would start things off nicely. I’m pretty sure it was “I’m a Rambling Man” by Waylon Jennings, although it could’ve been simply “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brother’s version, which has a little bit of country to it as well. However, I still haven’t been able to obtain the actual footage from Brenna, so I can’t be sure. Fear not, any corrections and back story not relevant to karaoke will appear whenever I put this together into book form. Of course, that’s probably a few books down the road, and by then my memory will be even worse, so…

Anyway, I’m guessing it was the Allman Brothers, a version I don’t believe I’d previously attempted. If that was the case, I probably did a decent job (after so many karaoke evenings, the song list kind of runs together). It wasn’t my best performance, but good enough this early in the evening to get me another song (plus I tipped the DJ, something she obviously wasn’t used to). With the first song under my belt, I could relax, and I started taking in the real crowd. Or maybe they just started taking us in. Brenna had the camera along, but besides a quick stop to shoot some fireworks going off over Misquamicut (we still don’t know why), it had sat idle on the table, but when I got up to sing, she turned it on.

Did I already say that people love a camera? Well the nice thing about karaoke singers is that, well… they’re not actors. And they’re usually not professional singers, either (unless you count the trip Jennifer and I just took to Rosie’s bar in New York, but I’ll tell that one soon enough). They’re just normal people who like to sing and perform a little when they can. And normal people love the spotlight, right? I think this is another place where the Reality TV phenom comes in. We watch because we want to know what we would do in those situations (and usually believe we would do it so much better). So in this respect, I’m glad we had the camera (even if I don’t’ have access to it. no pressure, Brenna.). Whatever it was (maybe just New England friendliness), it didn’t take us long to meet some of the other patrons.

For my Tourjete

2005-07-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

I’m still a little mystified that you were so bothered by the group of young tourists with the video camera in the Sportsmen’s. Remember the story I told you about those three film students I ran into in Mexico on that dark night miles away from any real civilization?

So I wrote this for you… and it’ll also segue nicely into the second half of “Connecticut? Rhode Island?”

let them tell stories…

because there’s something about you

they wanted to take with them.

let yourself become a legend…

because what would they have seen?

a beautiful girl, dressed to kill,

(“at least for this bar”)

having a great time,

dancing like she knew what she was doing,

(“and she looked good”)

but not with every guy,

but simply with one

(“he was dashingly handsome”)

tattooed man,

who did an unexpected rendition

of Rocky Racoon,

a song that the DJ said

no one had picked since he started

karaoke in the ("dark and smoky") Southern Utah

(“dive”) bar.

and what they create from there,

is the stuff that stories are made of.

If I Could Save Time in a Bottle...

2005-06-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

author's note: In response to Becca tagging me "IT," this one is about 3 pages, but a good bit of it is white space. Should be a pretty quick read. Next entry probably won't show up until next week and will bring you all back to the East Coast with me on my Karaoke Summer Tour.

So here were the questions of which I was supposed to answer five...

If I could be a musician, If I could be a doctor, If I could be a painter, If I could be a gardener, If I could be a missionary, If I could be a chef, If I could be an architect, If I could be a linguist, If I could be a psychologist, If I could be a librarian, If I could be an athlete, If I could be a lawyer, If I could be an inn-keeper, If I could be a professor, If I could be a writer, If I could be a llama-rider, If I could be a bonnie pirate, If I could be an astronaut, If I could be a world famous blogger, If I could be a justice on any one court in the world, If I could be married to any current famous political figure

Personally, besides a few of them, I thought they lacked creativity and didn't push me to really think. I've heard much better "situational questions for consideration."

Like Mr. Croce's for which I've titled this blog.

Or my good friend, Becca's. "If you could choose any superpower…"

And with my recent disposition, my own contribution… If you had to choose between farts that would make noise and those that stink, which would you choose? Think about the different situations… movie theaters, restaurants, blind dates, the in-laws.

But, since none of these questions was posed to me (or at least "tagged" to me), I’ll take a quick moment to hit a few of the aforementioned.

The first one is easy, but my girl will probably be the only one to get the humor. If I could be a bonnie pirate… I already am. To let you in on part of the joke, I’ve always been fond of any variety of facial hair. One particular fashion a few years back even got me a gruff “Aarrggh,” from a passing pedestrian late one Saturday night in Missoula, Montana.

If I could be a writer… Damn that would be nice, but my agent just isn’t convinced I’m ready, and I have to trust that she knows what she’s talking about.

If I could be a chef... well, that would mean that I would’ve also gained some notoriety as a writer, because one of my dreams is a huge kitchen… and the time to use it.

If I could choose to be married to any current famous political figure, I’d probably choose not to.

And finally, I would probably choose farts that stink, because you can always walk a few feet away to do it… or just blame the dog.

Okay, one last story before I go.

So a friend of mine was visiting a woman in New York whom he hadn’t seen in a few years. He always had a little thing for her, and when he got the invite to visit, he thought he might have an opportunity to get the ball rolling… so to speak.

Long story short. They’re having dinner at her place (we’ll call her “Janie”), when my friend (“Rich”) feels the uncomfortable rumbling in his lower gut. Must’ve been the Mexican for lunch. Here’s the best part. He would’ve just excused himself from the table to go to the bathroom to let one go (light a match, you know?), but her toilet was out-of-order until the Super could get in and fix it. Janie had told him earlier that the neighbor woman was always at home and would let them use hers, but Rich wasn’t about to go over to the neighbor’s just for that, and if he just went in the hall, well then Janie might…

Well, he was in the middle of thinking about his options when one just slipped out by accident without a sound, and while it may not have been deadly, it surely wasn’t pretty. Rich started to sweat as Janie crinkled her nose. “Jeez,” she said and waved her hand in front of her face. Now Janie’s dog (“Spot”) had been lying at their feet this whole time. She looked under the table and said, “Spot, get out of there!” Spot looked up for a moment, then dropped his head down and went back to sleep.

Rich relaxed, chuckling to himself that he had escaped the potentially romantically damaging situation.

Well, we all know that rarely do farts travel alone, and it wasn’t long before another one brewed up, but feeling confident that he was in the clear, he let it go. Again, Rich almost laughed aloud as Janie told Spot to leave the room, but she still didn't forcibly eject him, and Spot slept on.

With desert came the third occasion, and without a thought, Rich adjusted in his seat slightly and again without a sound, polluted the room. He actually laughed this time, waiting for Janie to blame it on the dog.

“Spot,” Janie said, “for the last time, get out from under the table before Rich kills you.”

Silly Dick and Jane.

(Insert two taps on the snare, followed by the cymble.)

A Simple Question

2005-06-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

author's note: A little shorter, and a little more serious, this is something that's been stewing around in my head since returning from our Montana/Idaho trip a little over a month ago. And Becca, I'll get to the "it," but I don't know anyone else I could tag. I have another friend who blogs, but it's through a different network or some such thing. Anyway, on to a simple question.

“Are you happy?”

It’s one of the toughest questions, because it cuts through the bullshit, and while it is also the basest of questions, I’m constantly amazed at my instantaneous gut reaction after those rare moments when someone asks it that simply.

“Are you happy?”

It’s rarely as clear or total as “yes” or “no,” but you’ll definitely know which way you sway. Without even trying, a flood of your life will rush over you, those issues that please you as distinct from those which bother, as stark as night from day.

On my trip showing Montana (and much of my previous seven years existence) to Jennifer, I was asked this question twice and am pleased to say that, even while some things could have been better (more money, more free time, less work. You know.), I could respond in the affirmative.

All said and done, Jennifer and I spent five days away from home, and while some of it definitely felt too rushed, I was ready to get back to Cedar, and even back to work (I'm the main person in charge of fulfillment for the family biz, and something of a control freak). After feeling worn out and somewhat stressed before we left town, after spending that time with my wonderful woman (and sometimes Wonder Woman, but I won’t go into that), I felt rejuvenated. I hadn’t mentioned this, but a couple weeks earlier, I took a super quick family trip to San Diego, and seriously got bitten by the traveling bug again. But the trip north was a good respite, especially knowing that we have another one scheduled on the East Coast at the end of July.

So I was back at work when the UPS guy showed up.

“How was the vacation?” he asked.

“Great,” I told him. “A little too short, but I was ready to get back.” Not necessarily super-excited to be back at work, mind you, but it was okay.

“Really?” he asked. “Coming back is always the worst part for me.”

“Hmm,” I might have said.

Okay, in my opinion, if the worst thing about a vacation isn’t, say, the amount of money you spent or getting bitten by an alligator or two dozen mosquitoes, but rather having to come back home, then there is at least one thing in your life you need to change.

Because that’s what a vacation is really, right? A crying out for change…of something. Maybe a change of pace, place, or just faces. If we were completely satisfied with our surroundings, we’d never need to go on vacation. One of the more fascinating things I discovered from 7 months in Hawaii was that their vacation destination was Las Vegas. Can you imagine? Having lived within 3 hours of Las Vegas for 8 years, I surely can’t, but I guess you even need a break from paradise.

I know it was probably a whimsical comment from the UPS guy, but too often it’s not just a joke. People are truly miserable to be coming home, and in that case, vacation isn’t what is truly needed. That’s when someone needs to sit down and ask you, and not because they want to hear a certain answer or tell you what THEY think you should change, but they ask just because they care. “Are you happy?”

And if you can’t be happy in your home, then none of the traveling, moving or vacations will let you escape. A bigger change is necessary. Happiness is attainable, and right now, I can’t think of a single person in my life who doesn’t deserve it. For you disbelievers, those of you convinced that we're only allowed rare moments of contentedness, I’m going to say that one again. Happiness is attainable, and right now, I can’t think of a single person in my life who doesn’t deserve it.

One of the greatest things about living in Missoula was a sentiment I believe shared by many of my friends there. Vacations were great, but it was also great to come home, but not for any particular reason. Certain things could’ve been better (I had some pretty shitty jobs… literally, and wasn’t always dating sane women), but generally I was pleased with the pace, place and faces. Generally I was happy. Any of you who know me then would be shocked to hear this now, but after a recent great vacation to Montana and Idaho, I was ready to come home to Utah.

“Are you happy?” Ray had asked me. He pulled me aside after a couple shots of whiskey and a little smoke. Since the throat cancer, he’s slowed down a little. Now he takes his shots with ice and a little clear soda. Ray is a whole other story. Ask me sometime.

The question caught me off guard, as it always does, and feeling the swell of emotions, the bittersweet mix of pining for a place I no longer live and living with a woman I will always love, I felt a lump in my throat. I could be happier if I could have it all, my love and all my friends and family together in a beautiful place where you could get a decent Bloody Mary on Sunday, but who doesn’t want that?

“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”

“Good enough.” Ray clapped me on the shoulder. “Now let’s go have another drink.”

Connecticut? Rhode Island?

2005-06-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

author' note: This one takes you back on the road with me last Summer. It runs about 4 pages, but FEAR NOT, I'm going to do my damndest to intersperse shorter commentaries in between my longer bits. enjoy.

I have to check my wallet for Brenna’s business card for some sort of clue.

New London, CT.

But I’m pretty sure I was in Rhode Island as well. Maybe not. Did I mention I’m coming up on a year since I started this trip (have I come down, yet)? Damn it! Now I’ve got to get my atlas…

Okay, after further investigation, I had intended to go to Rhode Island, but ended up staying with Brenna at her grandmother’s place near the beach in Connecticut… where she worked… Connecticut, that is… I think.

Brenna Chapmann. I met Brenna when I was just a few months away from leaving Missoula. I had moved into The Duck (a whole other book) with one foot already on the road. Friends practically instantly, we kept in communication after I left Montana (even met up with her and Kim Joyner for a week in Mexico. The “week-barometer,” by the way, is a great litmus for true friends).

Before Jennifer, I wasn’t sure if I’d meet another woman with whom I liked hanging out as much as Brenna. A fellow artist and traveler, outstanding writer and photographer, Brenna is still searching for her place in this world, figuratively and literally, seeking ideals in a journalistic world often lacking such, trying to wrap her mind around her purpose. “Raisin duh‘etre” for you Frenchies.

When I caught up with her last Summer (the previous time was probably on one of my trips through Missoula) she was spending her time between Rhode Island, where her parents and grandmother lived (Bill, Lynda and Nana, right Brenna? Great folks. Bill, great mustache. I’ve since grown mine back.) and her grandmother’s place in Connecticut. I think Rhode Island was my original destination, and might still have been were I not running late leaving Maryland. Nothing like a few repairs to your vehicle to set you back… in more ways than one, but I was having too much fun at this point to worry about finances.

After meeting up with my family, as well as a slew of other family, in Virginia, Maryland and NYC (more on this later), I bid a fond farewell (not so fond to the mechanics) and started the second half of my trip.

Footnote: Travel up to this point, through the Mid-West and up the East Coast, had been clear of any major weather. Also, my travel days usually fell on weekdays, subsequently avoiding much traffic.

I’m pretty sure it was a Friday when I left Maryland. Some of the worst rain I’ve driven in hit me just as I was just outside of New York City. About nine of ten p.m. Yeah. Here’s the ironic part (I think). In Maryland, my brother, his family and I opted to take the train to New York for that leg of their visit, so we wouldn’t have to drive in the city while we were visiting our cousin, Libbe. Yeah.

Well, I survived the drive, but as the hour grew later, I realized I’d better call Brenna. Here is where plans changed (although I don’t remember why) and I was diverted to the beach house in Connecticut. Sometime after midnight, I navigated through the narrow curving streets of a barely lit sleepy East Coast beach neighborhood. The ocean was purportedly nearby (apparently after one of my wrong turns…the damn signs were TINY… I almost found it) but it was too dark out to tell. Finally I found the place, and even though both of us were worn-out from our days, we still wanted to catch up, and tired conversation ensued until yawning took over. I went to sleep, trying to picture what the unfamiliar neighborhood would look like in the daylight.

Brenna had done her research. Apparently just one week earlier, one of the local independent rags ran a cover story on karaoke…AND DAMN IT! I TRAVELED PROBABLY SIX THOUSAND MORE MILES WITH THAT ARTICLE, AND NOW I CAN’T FIND IT!

Moving on. The cover showed a guy probably not too far from his mid-thirties in a black button down shirt, sleeves rolled almost to the elbows, and yes, black leather pants. He sported a trimmed black goatee and, appearing to be a few pounds heavier than his height, was working hard at his impression of what the article informed me was probably Meat Loaf. Apparently, he was a die-hard Meatloaf fan, and being something of fan myself, I can only snicker a little.

The article went on to give a little history of karaoke, of course, and tried to decipher the same mystery that sent me on this trip. And it gave a quick run down of the bars and taverns where one might find karaoke in New Haven… New London… Newport?

But we were deciding to hell with New Something! And it was off to Misquamicut. Ahh, Misquamicut. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is easy to do in this case, because I’m coming up on a year since I left on this adventure (June 28th), and some of the details (or at least the order of the details) probably should’ve been written down.

But should they really have? I wonder sometimes. Kind of like taking a picture. Or choosing not to. Memories will imprint, rise to the surface and then fade again, like waves as the years go past. So many moments work to shape us each and every day that sometimes I’m forced to lock the writer in a closet and just drink it in, life through every pore of your body until you can’t see straight, and you don’t remember what happened the next morning. That was really what this trip was about. The karaoke was an extension to my real vision of experiencing life. Different places, hundreds of different faces. To drink of it all until I was drunk, and even though the writer was often locked away, he didn’t complain so much.

The buzz was infectious.

And now that I’ve said that all about keeping the moments simply in your memories, I’ll throw out a quick teaser of my next segment. Film footage exists somewhere in this world of my performance that night at the Windjammer in Misquamicut, Rhode Island.

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Over the past nine years (or at least that's when I started noticing), I can't think of a single Memorial Day weekend when it didn't rain (or even snow) at least once, and usually uncharacteristically out of the blue weather-wise. Almost as if God is mourning the fact that we kill each other. Then people gripe because it ruined their weekend plans. Like children, we are forced to stay inside (if only briefly) and think about what we did wrong.

It's kind of sad that we are happy that people died so we can have a three day weekend.

Keep that war machine rumbling.

"You went where?"

2005-03-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

author's note: This entry runs about 4 dbl spaced pages in MS Word. One thing I forgot to mention was one of my choices for this evening... Buffalo Springfield's, "For What it's Worth." Without the video, this time.

23rd March, 2005

So you want to talk about strange?

Last Friday I went to karaoke at the Sportsmen’s Lounge in Cedar City, Utah. As you may recall, my two dear readers, a karaoke evening last Spring in the Blue Kat in Cedar started this whole mess to begin with. Seeing another’s true passion for live performance, even if only in the presence of a few others, inspired my whole Summer Karaoke tour.

Well, much to my chagrin, the Blue Kat has long since closed in Cedar City, and we’re left with only a couple choices, the same ol’ crackers, you know? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the Sportsmen’s… yet. I spent a fair amount of time there in my formative college years. Drinkin’ and dancin’. Shooting pool and fooling around. Hell, they provided me with my first taste of karaoke, so I have to give them some credit, but after being gone from Cedar City for over seven years, I was more than a little surprised to see that, beyond some interesting remodel decisions, the Sportsmen’s Lounge offered basically the same fare as ten years ago, and my tastes had changed in the interim.

But the Blue Kat had closed, and I gotta’ sing every now and then, leaving only the Sportsmen’s so far as I know. Now when I left you, fair readers, the end of 2004 was nigh. Jennifer and I had just started tiptoeing into the calming pools of new love. Through her (sort of) I had discovered others passionate about playing the Man (or Woman) Without a Band. I knew I’d found the perfect woman when she told me that her friends (coincidentally, quite of few with whom I had been friends in high school as well) had been holding something of a karaoke New Year’s party for quite a few years running.

Oh, it was on.

Without seeming like I was attempting a coup d’etat of the New Year’s party, I tried to probe for the details of the festivities. For instance, did someone have one of those home version karaoke machines? Tapes or just CD’s? As it turned out, Rebecca Jorgensen usually made the compilation music CDs for a stereo with a microphone jack, and then it was “Good luck! Hope you remember the words.”

I decided to take it up a notch, and the following happened in the early weeks of December (but not necessarily in this particular order): Jennifer told me her DVD player had a microphone jack. I discovered the first Karaoke DVD of what would eventually grow a collection of over 200 songs by New Years. Incidentally, the first DVD was probably the worst of my collection. It was produced somewhere in Asia with American actors. Yes, I said actors, which means videos, and you know my feelings on those. Even better, many of the lyrics were incorrect, based possibly on an Asian phonetic understanding of the words.

But the two biggest factors playing into the development of the New Year’s party came from my folks. The first being the offer of their place outside of town to host while they went to Catalina Island for their annual trip. And they completely caught me off guard with the Christmas gift of a Singing Machine Karaoke Machine, complete with a little camera that could project you either on the little six-inch screen, or in the case of my parents place, on their freakin’ huge television upstairs, while the lyrics scrolled over the smaller screen.

Are you sensing trouble? Chaos? The Las Vegas gang? Wild hysterical laughter, Mark Rock dancing, duets, love songs, drunk songs? Snow and mud, snoring and shouting? Are you getting an idea?

Well, none of that happened, Mom and Dad.

(As for the rest of you, look for “Man Without a Band” in book form in a few years)

Because the most important part was discovering a few more people in my circle of friends who liked to sing as much as me. And some pretty damned good singing, don’t you know? Of course, I think some of them (ahhemm, Kodi and Becca) get more practice with those Nintendo games (or Playstation or whatever). Have you seen these games? You can pick your character, stage, and song and you get judged on how closely your performance resembles the actual artist. Apparently, if you’re super-bad, you actually spontaneously combust on stage.

After warming them all up to the idea a couple weeks earlier, I convinced the gang (or at least as many as I could) to find sitters for children, gather up their courage (even if only the courage to listen to other drunks singing), and hit the Sportsmen’s this past Friday night. The gang in attendance was composed of Erin and Lannie Achord, Erik and Becca Jorgensen, and Jennifer and me. I knew from the get-go that Erin and Lannie were only there to play foosball, and was pleased that I could give them the excuse to get out for their first competition since before the birth of Addison. The two of them spent probably about fifteen minutes total at our table, but you could see it was purely social obligation when they were actually antsy to get back to the games. But during that time, Lannie asked me about my rating of the Karaoke experience at the Sportsmen’s, as I had been a couple times since being back in town.

“Well,” I shouted over a Metallica song performed by a slightly overweight girl who made up for her lack of talent with an overabundance of enthusiasm, “this is actually my first time with this guy [Hyrum Zerkle of HyZee Karaoke. Am I in Utah or what?], but for a relatively small town with a college, based on other comparisons, I’d give it about a seven.” Upon discovering later only one Neil Diamond song, I dropped that to a five. Maybe a three.

As to Erik, a good friend of mine from my last two years in high school, he had made it pretty clear that he didn’t plan on singing. As did Jennifer. Neither of which, I believe, came as much of a surprise to Erik’s wife, Becca, or myself. But while this was just another night for me, it had special meaning to Rebecca. After almost 15 years in Cedar City, she had never been in the Sportsmen’s Lounge (“only been in any bar once or twice,” Erik told me), and she had never performed karaoke live outside of her circle of friends. Now this is important because Rebecca is in the top five most passionate-about-karaoke people that I’ve met in my adventures, and she has the talent to boot. And as far as the art goes, the second best thing to performing yourself is getting someone else hooked. It’s like a drug, I tell ya’.

You hear your name called. Your heart races. You take another drink, and walk up to the microphone. Maybe you light a cigarette, but you hope they don’t see your hands shaking when you set your beer on the stool. Because even the most confident of us, even after having had praises heaped upon us from friends and strangers alike, will still get nervous that first song of the evening. Like actors or dancers, that moment of pure adrenaline just before going on stage.

Next thing you know, it’s too late to sit back down. You’re singing, trying to keep up with the lyrics, often surprised by what you’re reading. (So that’s what Mick is saying). Sometimes people dance, or sing along, clap their hands or hoot their approval, but it’s the applause at the end that sends you back to your bar stool floating just a couple inches off the sticky floor. That’s what it is all about. That love of music so intense that, whether you can pull it off or not, it makes you want to go back for more. To sing the songs you sang well the first time. To try again the songs you screwed up before. And to attempt the ones you’ve always wanted to hear yourself singing over loudspeakers.

As I get back to work on my travelogue, and attempt to tell you the rest of the adventures from my Summer Karaoke Trip (it’s almost been a year since I left), I think it’s important to remember why I started all of this nonsense to begin with.

Just a quickie

2004-12-06T16:29:00.000-07:00

Having completed the tale of Illinois, I've related approximately half of my SKT (Summer Karaoke Tour) stories to you, my single reader. I'm also looking down the barrel of a deadline for completion of rewrites to my first novel, The Imaginings, at the end of this year. Any time writing over the next few weeks has to be directed hence. Or something.

FEAR NOT! I've intercepted the plans for a small karaoke New Year's Eve Party, and am covertly working on taking it up a notch. Please return to my website in the new year for this and many other stories about "A Man without a Band."

And a joyful Hannuchriskwanza to you all.

Vigilante Justice at the IHOP- part two of the Bloomington IL experience

2004-12-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

Authors note: this wraps up the story of our karaoke night out in Illinois. It's a longer one, just about six pages, but it served as one of the top three most memorable moments from nearly two months on the road.

A few other memorable moments at Pheasant Lanes Bowling Alley:

Michelle, my documentarian (not actually a word) for the evening. Once she heard I was writing a book, in her friendly, casual manner, she started interviewing patrons. One girl said she remembered growing up and singing with her family by the piano. They would all gather Sunday nights, and mom would pull out the old song book, and they would joyously sing until they couldn’t sing any longer. She said her brother hated it.

Dance moves. This is another bizarre phenomenon, dancing to karaoke. It sounds a little strange (and feels a little stranger when you’re doing it), but it’s the highest compliment to a karaoke singer, even better than applause. This evening had two surprises to offer in this department, and let me tell you, there wasn’t that much room for dancing, maybe a little strip of carpet five feet by fifteen.

The back flip, performed by a short, latino-looking guy wearing a homemade sleeveless tee-shirt revealing half-a-dozen tattoos, was impressive indeed, but the second act brought the house down. I had already noticed the younger group in the bar. Mid-twenties, big-city alternative look, tattoos much fresher than the backflipper. They didn’t look like they quite fit in Bloomington, and my first guess was college. Now there’s something to be said for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but there’s something even better about being in the right place, or possibly just looking in the right direction. Just as I took a sip from my beer, I noticed one of the guys, tall, skinny, dyed black hair and tattooed sleeves to the elbow. One of his friends was singing and he had positioned himself at the opposite end of the room. Suddenly he charged at one of the many banquet style folding tables set up in the lounge. Next thing I knew, it was Super Party Time, and he slid the length of possibly two of the tables with a loud whoop and crashing of bottles.

Here’s the best part. The bartender issued him a stern warning, but let him stay and drink. Not long after, I took up Michelle’s position (I think at the time, she was “investigating” why one of the other women patrons was being so rude) and decided to talk with the perpetrator of the table-slide, rock star style. I caught up with him at the bar and put his next drink on my tab. When the bartender was out of earshot, I congratulated him on the ballsy move. He told me his name was Josh. His group was visiting from Oakland, but he said he grew up in Bloomington.

“You can take the boy out of the country,” he told me, “but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”

The final memorable moment at Pheasant Lanes set the stage for the second act of the evening. It marked two firsts for me. The DJ chose me to perform the final song of the evening, and I chose to perform Charlie Daniel’s “Uneasy Rider” for the first time. A story song, with a definite quick pace, I had debated whether or not to attempt it, but Tyler talked me into it. For a quick sample…

I was takin' a trip out to L.A.
Toolin' along in my Chevrolet,
Tokin' on a number and diggin' on the radio.
Just as I crossed the Mississippi line,
I heard that highway start to whine,
And I knew that left rear tire was about to go.

Well, the spare was flat and I got uptight,
'Cause there wasn't a fillin' station in sight.
So I just limped on down the shoulder on the rim.
I went as far as I could and when I stopped the car
It was right in front of this little bar,
Kind of redneck lookin' joint, called the Dew Drop Inn.

Well, I stuffed my hair up under my hat
And told the bartender that I had a flat,
And would he be kind enough to give me change for a one.
There was one thing I was sure proud to see,
There wasn't a soul in the place, 'cept for him and me
And he just looked disgusted and pointed toward the telephone.

I called up the station down the road a ways,
And he said he wasn't very busy today,
And he could have somebody there in just 'bout ten minutes or so.
He said now you just stay right where you're at,
And I didn't bother tellin' the durn fool that
I sure as hell didn't have anyplace else to go.

I just ordered up a beer and sat down at the bar,
When some guy walked in and said; "Who owns this car?
With the peace sign, the mag wheels and four on the floor?
"Well, he looked at me and I damn near died,
And I decided that I'd just wait outside
So I layed a dollar on the bar and headed for the door.

Just when I thought I'd get outta there with my skin
These five big dudes come strollin' in,
With this one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth.
And I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said "You tip your hat to this lady, son."
And when I did all that hair fell out from underneath.

Almost five and a half minutes of that without a break, refrain or solo. I’ve performed it one other time since (in Missoula, MT near the end of my summer karaoke adventure) with a little better results, but I’m proud to say I probably kept up with at least 85 percent of the lyrics for my first attempt, any missing lines hopefully easily reconciled by my impression of Charlie Daniels.

With the last song sung, we all settled up with the bartender (which probably turned out to be more money in tips than the actual bill) and rambled out into the parking lot. Sans any sort of vehicle we decided to walk to the IHOP for a late-night feeding before catching a cab back to our respective places of passing out. At least that’s what I recall. There might’ve been some other debate involving walking or where to go, but I was on vacation and therefore submitted to the majority will, using the discussion time to instead take in my surroundings.
For whatever reason, we stumbled into IHOP just shy of three a.m., I believe. With smokers in our midst (myself possibly being one of them at that time), the hostess put us in the corner of the restaurant glassed off from the rest of the customers… the smoker’s aquarium. Surely you’ve seen these in various airports around the country. However, while they seem generally bleak in airports, they’re usually the only place to be in a restaurant afterhours, even if you don’t smoke. It’s often like grownup romper room, a box full of ravenous ex-bar patrons. Inevitably, you’ll see someone slip out of their chair or simply fall asleep waiting for their food. A comedian will be present, often more than one, and they’ll usually be located at the loudest table.

This particular evening, that turned out to be our table. Holding the majority of the IHOP population, the smoker’s aquarium had three other tables of customers in addition to our party of five. Two tables held college-aged couples. The third was occupied by two older couples, friends of family or family friends or maybe just family, again of Michelle’s, who wandered in shortly after we did, and seemed a little more tipsy than our group but more restrained.

The stage was set, and things were going as I expected, with a few amusing surprises. The best of these occurred when Steve, a former chef who was currently embarrassed by the childish antics of his friends, pre-tipped the waitress five bucks. I believe he hoped it would be insurance against the spitting wrath he was convinced our food would incur. Probably a very good idea, but at the time, bearing witness to possibly the first pre-tipping of an IHOP waitress in restaurant history was enough to break the rest of us into hysterical laughter, which of course only irritated Steve more.

With the pre-tipping and ordering out of the way, the atmosphere settled down slightly at our table, only to be stirred up again with the arrival of two other guys, one of them easily three hundred plus pounds, and the other not more than a buck fifty. Apparently, the skinny one knew somebody in Michelle’s acquaintance’s party. The volume rose in the glass room, as the waitress entered to attempt to take the third table’s order. In my memory, things really escalated here. Being clownish, the skinny guy walked over behind the waitress and started talking over her, interrupting while the others tried to place their orders. Control was slipping away in the room. The people sitting were telling him to be quiet, the waitress squirmed to maintain, and the skinny guy just kept up laughing and slurring stupidity. Davey finally shattered the pandemonium.

“Just shut the fuck up!” he shouted at the skinny guy.

“Whoa, Davey… take it easy… it’s okay, Davey…” Glances from our table towards the kitchen, other customers outside the aquarium now looking in.

Now the skinny guy must’ve really been drunk, because he comes over and starts clapping Davey on the shoulder (keeping in mind how huge Davey is) and saying things like “Oh yeah, big boy, you got something to say? Maybe we should just take it outside,” all the while, those of us at the table keeping up the steady torrent of calming phrases in Davey’s direction. “Don’t get up, Davey… it’s okay… let it go… No, don’t stand up…”

I was informed later that night of Davey’s rough high school years, and how it was an amazing display of self-control that he didn’t jump up and pummel the skinny guy into the floor like some cartoon nail. Later, we were proud of Davey, but in the moment, we were mostly relieved when he remained seated, and a moment later, a group of people including the manager were escorting the lucky-to-be-alive guy out of the IHOP.

Well, it couldn’t have been ten seconds later that one of the younger girls at the table by the window stood up. “He just knocked down some woman in the parking lot,” she said.

Shit, I thought, as Davey jumped up, then Steve, and Tyler. They were already on their way out when I finally stood. “Shit.” I looked through the plate glass windows into the parking lot, and will never forget the image I saw.

I related this event to my friend, Mike Guild in Minneapolis, also a former resident of Rock Creek, Montana, and he loved this part of the story. He made me tell the whole thing to two other groups of people, but before I could start, he would preface by saying, “Now, you have to know Steve Carr. One of the nicest guys around, if there’s one thing you don’t do, you don’t ever hit a woman.”

Steve may not have been the first one out of the restaurant, but when I looked out the window, I saw him leading the group, rushing towards the edge of the parking lot where it turned to grass, his arm swinging around in a wide right hook. Like slow motion in my mind’s eye.

“Michelle,” I said. “We need to go outside. Now.” I started around the corner, passing the hostess at the front station, on the phone. I only caught a couple words, but I knew the police would be arriving shortly. Time to pacify the situation.

The first car arrived within five minutes, the second shortly after. With the skinny guy locked in one of the patrol cars, one of the officers approached our group.

“What happened here?” he asked, and looked at Davey, who by this point looked like he had just caught the game winning pass, but had been called back by an off-sides penalty. “Well that guy came in the restaurant,” Davey sputtered out, his face red and sweaty, “and he was being loud and--”

That’s when I stepped in. “I can tell you,” I said. “My friends just a little excited.” And then I relayed the details I felt relevant to the law. The officer still had Davey fill out the official report later, but hopefully he stuck with the same basics.

“He came into the restaurant and was being disruptive, causing trouble. He got obnoxious, and the management had him escorted out. Then one of the other customers said they saw him knock over some woman in the parking lot. We came out here to detain him before he could run off, in case he needed to be held liable for any injuries to this woman.”

Some of you reading this have already heard the story between the lines, but for the rest of you, it’s a story better told over a beer. Or you can wait until all of this is published in book form. Either way, a few teasers until then…

a missing knife? While I didn’t see her leave the restaurant in the commotion of the skinny guy’s ejection, it turned out to be the relative of Michelle’s knocked down in the parking lot.

a random tow-truck driver on the scene who had served time in one of Illinois’s meaner prisons on charges of hate crimes.

Also the extended story includes these lines of dialogue.
“I just lost a shoe, and my pants are falling down,” he said as they dragged him across the grass like a passed-out drunkard.
“I don’t give a shit about your shoes, or your pants.”

As it turns, out the guy had several warrants out for his arrest, and had we simply recognized him in the restaurant and called the police, we could’ve been up for a reward. Unfortunately, the way everything went down, we didn’t even get our meal comped. Oh well.

Again as in Madison, there were lots of nice, family-oriented things about the Bloomington experience. Lots of good food and friends, staying at Tyler’s house, spending time with Angie and Colton, driving around the countryside, reminiscing with Steve, etc… but those stories will also have to wait for the book. Next stop, Virginia.

Chinese karaoke in Honolulu

2004-11-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Author's note: Just about four pages of a relatively silly karaoke anecdote from the six months I worked on O'ahu.

In the Winter and Fall of ’03, I worked for my good friend, Shawn Ekker, building a house in Honolulu. Obviously, there’s a longer story getting me there, but for the sake of getting to the karaoke story, the important thing is that the home owner put up five dirty carpenters for six months in a hotel just a few blocks from downtown Waikiki. Can you spell “trouble”? Okay, have a couple more drinks and then try.

Well, none of us knew anyone in Hawaii, and with good cash in our pockets and all of our bills covered, generally the Fox and Hound pub (right around the corner) for a couple rounds followed shortly after dinner. Sometimes they coincided (George made a helluva’ fish and chips, extra portions for the regulars, which we had become by this point). On one particular evening, though, I decided to try out something different. It must’ve been a weekend, because I don’t think I had seen more than one or two people during the week in the Chinese karaoke bar located between our hotel and the Fox and Hound. But after seeing customers through the tinted glass on a few weekend evenings, I decided to see whom I could con into joining me for a little adventure.

Turned out the only coworker I could convince on this particular evening was Keith. The entire crew might have even started the evening out at the pub, but only Keith seemed up for the trip to the unfamiliar.

A few words briefly about Keith. Again, just so you have a picture of the setup. A couple years older than me, Keith used to live in Southern California, where he had a pretty rough living. When he was younger, he had been in and out of trouble with the law, and grew up to run around with bikers and white supremacists for a while, but more on the business end of things. One day he decided to get away from it all, and left California. Keith doesn’t say much, so it took me awhile to learn some of the stories that I can’t repeat, but I will say that when I met Keith, while some of his past still showed, clinging to him (as it always does), he seemed to be trying to lead an honest life.

The two strongest things Keith and me shared in common this particular evening were the facts that we were the only single guys on our crew, and we both liked to tie one on occasionally. I think it just sounded a little too weird to the rest of the gang.

And to be honest, they probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did. In fact, I’m not sure Keith really had that great of a time, but as a writer, I’m always searching out different, bizarre, if even a little uncomfortable fragments of life. If nothing else, I’m sure he was at least amused at my antics. But again, I’m putting the cart ahead of the horse.

I’ll start by setting the scene. A dark bar set back in one of the many strip-mall-ish sections of storefronts lining the hotel district. I can’t recall the name, though I passed it at least a hundred times. Maybe it was just a Chinese symbol. That would’ve been fitting, because I didn’t really understand eighty percent of what took place in the bar.

We opened the glass door, and it didn’t take long, even in the dark, to realize that not a single other white person occupied the bar or any of the numerous round, modern tables with identical stainless steel and frosted glass lanterns crowded together in the lounge.

I might’ve whispered, “This should be interesting,” to Keith as we searched out a table. A song played over the speakers, and a video flashed over the big screen television on the back wall of the bar, but I didn’t see anyone standing up with a microphone. It wasn’t until we sat down that I realized that it was a karaoke video, someone in the bar was singing it, and it wasn’t in English. Chinese characters scrolled across the screen (oddly enough, though, left to right), and a woman’s voice chimed in over the sound system. It took me a moment, however, to locate the singer. A pretty Asian woman sitting with a couple other girls a few tables away.

This was the first strange thing. I don’t believe I’d ever seen anyone sing karaoke from their table. Leaning against a bar, the monitor or a microphone stand? Sure. But sitting at their table? Never. Strange thing number two? When she finished, no one clapped. My first thought was, while it hadn’t sounded horrible to me, she must’ve really butchered whatever Chinese
song she sang.

The next person started their song (again remaining seated at her table), and we ordered a couple of beers. The waiter, a younger guy who spoke broken English, handed us a song book and a few slips of paper with our drinks. “You sing?” he asked us.

“I might,” I said.

“Okay, just bring me songs.”

The woman finished singing, and again, while I hadn’t understood a word, I was surprised when the bar remained silent. No applause. Strange. And a little eerie. Again I got the feeling that I had stepped onto a Kubric or Lynch movie set. Oh yeah, we were staying for at least a couple rounds. I flipped open the book and started looking for songs while someone attempted an Elvis song. This guy even stood up next to his table while he sang, but not counting myself, he was one of maybe three to do as much, and maybe one of two other songs in English.

Nobody clapped for him, either. I’ve since heard that it’s considered rude to applaud in Asian cultures (or maybe just Chinese) because it’s a form of judging another’s performance and that implies a sense of superiority or some such thing. Whatever it was, Keith and I got used to it eventually, and conversation turned to work as we continued to drink and wait for my songs (you didn’t think Keith would put in any requests, did you? Neither did I.) I didn’t have to pay too much attention (nor did I really want to, seeing as I didn’t recognize anything playing), because the song slips asked for my table number along with my requests, and when my songs came up, the bartender would bring the cordless microphone to the table. I chose to at least stand when I sang. I believe I’ve already mentioned that you get better air from the diaphragm that way.

I chose a few songs for this evening. Can’t recall the first, but I decided to try out “Purple Rain” for the first time. I sound much better with Prince’s actual help on that one, I believe. The Chinese bartender jokingly told me not to quit my day job. Or maybe he was serious. Maybe he just made it sound joking because we were tipping well.

Now I’ve already ranted on my distaste for karaoke videos (for more on this, read “Poker and Self Help Books, part one”), but it was even more comical to see the Chinese versions, especially of the American songs. But the video accompanying my last song was the topper. I picked Waylon Jenning’s “Luckenbach, Texas.” I don’t think the video production creative team knew what to do with this one, so they covered the screen completely with images of cattle. Grazing, walking, looking stupid. But not a single human being. It got to the point where I couldn’t help laughing, and soon I started substituting “cow” into the song whenever I could.

“...feudin’ like the Hatfields and McCows…”

"Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas. Waylon, Willie and the cows.”

Well let me tell ya’, I was the funniest person I knew. I would sing “cow,” then start laughing at how hilarious I was, apologize profusely to the crowd, start singing again, throw in “cow,” and the whole thing would start over. I think Keith thought it was funny, but who knows? Again, the important thing was that I thought it was funny.

I’m lucky I made it through the whole thing, laughing as hard as I was, and I felt certain that it wouldn’t be long before the owner of the bar would put an end to my shenanigans. But the song ended. “Thank you! Goodnight!” I was still laughing and looking around, but it was as if the two white guys didn’t even exist. No acknowledgement, whatsoever. I didn’t expect applause at this point, of course, but there wasn’t even a chuckle, or even a head turned our direction. We finished our beers and left, never to return again.

I’ve also heard that karaoke is supposed to be a stress-reliever in Asian cultures, a way to blow off steam, but let me tell you, these people could use to relax just a little more. I mean, they were in Hawaii, for hell’s sake.

Vigilante Justice at the IHOP- part one of the Bloomington, IL karaoke experience

2004-11-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

authors note: At about five pages, this is the first part of the story of the rowdiest experience on my summer tour. As with many other segments, beware glaring generalizations and stereotypes.

After leaving Madison, I made my way south into Illinois. I was heading into Bloomington to visit friends I met in Montana. Funny thing about this trip. With the exception of the visit I would make to my first girlfriend ever now living in Montreal, all of the friends I would visit on this trip would be people I met in Montana. But the Bloomington crew was special. For many reasons other than just karaoke, but I’ll stick with the theme and tell the story of the only time I was hooked from the stage.

Harold’s Club. Milltown, Montana. The building looks like it used to be some sort of small mill (fitting with the town name, I guess) and at night, the Harold’s Club sign on the side of the building is lit in a bright neon red that you can see for a mile. The best comparison I can come up with is Porky’s place in the movie of the same name. Inside Harold’s they have trophy mounts of a big horn sheep and mountain goat hung on the walls, and for pure protection I’m guessing, they’re both encased in the glass gunner shells of B-52 bombers. And while the crowd has changed since this particular story to include more college kids, at the time of this incident it was even more cowboy hats and trucker caps than the Limelight Lounge (for more on this story see the brief anecdote in “Poker and Self-Help Books-part one”), but I was still the long-hair. Luckily I was with my crew, then from Rock Creek, Montana, and I’m sure all of their own cowboy hats made up for the fact that they had a hippy in their company.

Maybe that’s why I felt safe with my choice of songs. Of course, the fact that I was drunker than two skunks probably played a part. For whatever reason, I chose to sing Led Zeppelin’s “I Can’t Quit You, Baby,” a relative obscure bluesy song off Zeppelin I. You might have heard of it, but I can pretty much guarantee that most folks at Harold’s hadn’t, and didn’t especially want to hear my slurring version serenading any woman in sight (which didn’t reach too far for me at this point. I could barely read the words on the monitor). Needless to say, about two-thirds through the song, the volume suddenly tapered off. Apparently I was done. I left the stage in a huff, to which my friends all eased my mind with comments like “I thought it was great,” and “I can’t understand why he cut you off.” Of course, about a month later, I overheard the true sentiments, like “whoa, that was bad,” and “man, was he ever drunk.”

This incident actually got me blacklisted with Tom, the owner of Solid Sound Karaoke, for almost a year. I would put in a song, and it would never come up. Soon enough, I started having friends put in my songs under fake names.

“Pablo, you’re up for the next song!” Tom would announce, and I would hop on stage triumphantly. Once you’re up there, he can’t deny you. Over the following years, I proved myself to Tom, and before leaving Missoula, I was actually one of his favorites.

So the Rock-Creek-now-Bloomington crowd was familiar with my antics, and with a preemptive email asking all friends and family to locate the nearest karaoke bar, we were primed for a good evening. I had no idea that it would eventually involve police and paramedics, but when you sign up for a night of karaoke, you hand over the reins to the fates.

It was interesting driving into Bloomington. Most of the Rock Creek clan actually grew up in this city, and over the years I had heard many stories and adventures revolving around it, so in a way it was like I was driving into my own hometown. As I crossed through the city, I tried to picture my friends as kids running through the streets, tried to picture it from their eyes back then. I was staying with Steve and Michelle Carr. You may remember Michelle from her quoted declaration in one of my earlier entries. “Nothing good happens after midnight,” she said after our night at Pheasant Lanes, but I’m still getting to that.

I had worked doing carpentry with Steve back in Montana, but not long after the birth of their second daughter, they decided they wanted to be closer to family. It had only been a couple months since their return to Illinois and I felt lucky to be a houseguest in their new home which Steve was already busy remodeling. The other friends showed up shortly after my arrival with beers in hand. Tyler Buckley arrived with his wife, Angie, and their new son, Colton (two additions to his life I had yet to meet). Davey showed up as well, maybe with Tyler. Angie would be taking Colton home for a quiet evening, so unfortunately (probably not unfortunate for her) wouldn’t be joining us. Michelle had arranged babysitting duties with her parents (another benefit of being closer to family), and was excited about the night ahead. The cards were laid out on the table, and the players departed for Pheasant Lanes Bowling Alley.

A few quick words about the participants of this evening before I go much farther. Steve… at least six and a half feet I’d guess, but not lanky. A solid house of a guy, Steve was known in Rock Creek as the Gentle Giant for his quiet disposition. Just don’t cross him when he’s had a few. Dave, or Davey… visited Rock Creek from Illinois a few times over the years. While he’s about my height, his girth equals almost two of me, and it’s mostly muscle. Tyler matches my size almost to the letter, but occasionally his mouth (or more importantly, what comes out of it) is more suited to someone of Davey’s stature. As he is strong willed and opinionated, it seems to me that few people are lukewarm on Tyler; they either really like him or they don’t, and that’s just fine by him. As for me, well my brother always said that it was my look that kept me out of fights, and luckily so, because I lack any of the experience in that arena should anyone care to take me up on it. In Rock Creek, I was the Loose Deputy. Finally there’s Michelle. The peacekeeper. The moderator. The most level-headed of the bunch…usually.

With the exception of a note that I scrawled to myself on the back of one of the song slips (we have to keep a wrangle on Dave and Tyler), these personality types really won’t come out until the IHOP after karaoke, but I wanted you to have a picture of the main players in this evening as we all piled into Tyler’s ride on our way to Pheasant Lanes. Another friend of the gang from their childhood days, Doug, met us at the bar and hung out for awhile, but was smart enough to leave early.

I’m not sure what everyone else was expecting when we arrived, but I wasn’t surprised by the crowd we found in the lounge of Pheasant Lanes (for more on this, visit any bowling alley bar on a Saturday night… especially if they have karaoke). Tyler, pretty conservative and usually dressed looking the part, probably summed it up the best for everyone else. “When I heard you were coming into town,” he said, “I had all of these great ideas of things we could do and places to go. This wasn’t one of them.” But to give him credit, he was the only other besides myself to get up and sing a couple.

A few random moments and notes I made before the evening got too rowdy:

Don’t do the new songs. One of my personal karaoke credos. Be it country or rock, I usually choose the classics. For one, the new songs are too fresh to imitate, but more important, as I believe Steve pointed out, when you hear a classic rock song it takes you back to good times and good memories, times maybe sitting around a campfire or drinking with buddies, not just to what you heard on the radio on the ride over. This credo will come into play later in my trip at Vocalz, a karaoke bar in Montreal.

Those that follow the bars for karaoke. At any karaoke night, you’ll be able to pick out the regulars. Chances are, one or both of two facts are certain. They’ll do the same songs every week. And they know the establishments where karaoke takes place on any given night of the week. Oh yeah, one more thing. They either don’t drink much, if at all, or they’re raging alcoholics. Of course, I can’t say too much here. I have my favorite songs to sing, and when I lived in Missoula, even if I didn’t always go, I always knew where I could sing if need be.

The owner sings. This is a given. The operator of the equipment will always sing. Usually (hopefully) they’re pretty talented. They love to sing, may have even been in a band, or at least wish they could be in a band. Did I mention the name of this karaoke travelogue when it ever gets published? “Man Without a Band.”

The wandering singer. Our group sat in a raised area of the lounge away from the main karaoke equipment (however, there were at least four screens around the bar where the lyrics could be seen), and I couldn’t understand why almost all of the singers in this particular lounge either wandered around or stood in random spots throughout the bar to perform. I had never seen anything like it. But when I went up to the front to do my first song, Waylon’s “Rambling Man,” I realized that this was because the usual main monitor was absent, so people chose whatever screen was closest to them. Unlike the Chinese bar in Honolulu, where there was a main monitor but nobody chose to use it. They didn’t even stand from their tables. Have I told the Honolulu story yet? That was a doozy. Maybe I’ll insert that in between part one and part two of the Bloomington story. Keep your eyes peeled.

Two of the whitest guys ever singing ‘I Like Big Butts,’ by Sir Mix-A-Lot. This always cracks me up when super white people do rap songs. Enough said. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If not, again, visit any bowling alley karaoke on a Saturday night. You’ll see.

As it turned out, the gang chose Pheasant Lanes because the bartender happened to be a brother-in-law (I believe) of Michelle’s. Ahh, family. The drinks were flowing, and we weren’t paying for most of them (although he got a helluva’ tip). As the evening progressed, things got louder and rowdier. This was when I wrote my note about Tyler and Davey, Tyler being a good instigator and Davey being big enough to back it up. Still things remained mostly calm, but I knew things were getting loose as we waited for my second song, Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy.” It seemed like I had been passed over a few times, and naturally protective of my interests, there were a few grumbles from our group wondering when my turn would come again. Even Michelle was starting to get a little rambunctious. To wrap up Part One of this segment, I’ll end with the other funny quote from the evening. Some random guy chosen before me was in the middle of butchering a song. I made some comment about how I should’ve been up there, and Steve says to me…

“We could just go up there, take the microphone from him, knock him over the head a couple times with it, and then hand it back to him.”

The image this comment invoked incited laughter for a good few minutes.

Another quote from one of the greats for Halloween

2004-10-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Note: This entry was actually submitted by p.d.diablo and runs about two pages. The views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinions of the management of this blog or its affiliates.

"We're obviously separated by denominational differences."
-Charlie Brown (that's right. Charlie Brown)
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

And we were supposed to understand this stuff when we were kids?

This quote from the movie is from a scene where Charlie Brown asks Linus when he's going to stop believing in the Great Pumpkin, some apparent spectre (or so it seemed) that would rise out one chosen pumpkin patch somewhere in the world. Linus responds that he'll stop believing in the Great Pumpkin when Charlie Brown stops believing in some fat, jolly guy who squeezes down chimneys every year with presents (or some wording to that effect). Charlie Brown then fires off the aforementioned one-liner.

Think about that for a moment.... Could it be a masked discussion of the differences between Pagans and Christians?

But I'm not going that deep today. We were just kids, for hell's sake. I always liked this Charlie Brown cartoon as a child. It was a little spooky at parts, right? Kinda like the one where they all go to France, and the Chateau where Charlie Brown (I think... maybe Linus ) is staying catches on fire. Meanwhile, of course, Snoopy is off drinking in the pub dressed as a fighter pilot. Hey, if he's got the money... But I always remembered the tension in that one (was it Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don't come back)?).

One thing we all understood from these cartoons was that we didn't want to be Charlie Brown. In case any of you had forgotten (or never seen in the first place), in Great Pumpkin, while trick-or-treating with the gang, after each stop the children compare their loot. Candy bars, caramel apples, a quarter, etc... First off, I never got money when I trick-or-treated, but even more than this, apparently it was customary in 1966 (date of release) to give the children infortunado a rock in their bags. Charlie Brown must've got five. Every house dropped a stone the size of my fist instead of a treat into his sack. Can you imagine how heavy his bag would start getting? And you know that the Charlie Brown we never saw was throwing those rocks through the windows of the houses at two a.m. And why not? He didn't have any real parental supervision. "I'll show you a trick," he'd be grumbling. Probably cursing, as well.

Another quickie.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
-C.S. Lewis, and to stick with the movie motif, also heard in The Usual Suspects.

The other thing we learn from this one is that, right up until the end, we want to be Linus seducing the little blonde into the pumpkin patch on Halloween. And he's good, man. He's the sensitive, honest guy, right? "It's the most sincere pumpkin patch anywhere...not a sign of hypocrisy," he says. And Sally starts off playing it coy, tells him if he tries to hold her hand, she'd slug 'em. Ahh, a challenge. Did we really care if the Great Pumpkin showed up or not?

But here's the cincher. His romantic ideals were enough to reel her in, but in the end they weren't enough to keep her around. When Linus couldn't produce the great pumpkin, Sally walked out on him. Did this disprove the existence of the Great Pumpkin? Of course not. Only that his efforts had been insufficient. Somewhere lay a more sincere pumpkin patch. He had tried his best, and they called him a liar. Even worse... a blockhead.

I bet next year Linus figures out how to rig up a mechanical Great Pumpkin rising out of that patch, which, during his efforts to develop the illusion, will have since wilted, once great green leaves crisped in the sun, pumpkins brown and rotting. But they would believe him next year, dammit! And he'd get the girl. And maybe, just maybe, he'd jimmy a flamethrower in his Great Pumpkin that, at the moment they admitted that they were wrong...

You can almost see him working in the dusty shed late at night under a bare light bulb, fastening the device's giant pumpkin head together. "Call me a liar, will you? I'll show you a liar," he'd be grumbling. Probably cursing, as well.

Happy Halloween.

2004-10-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Did I mention Jennifer?

Poker and Self Help Books- part two- Madison, WI

2004-10-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

Author's note: Sorry it's been so long. Things have been pretty hectic. Nest egg finally cracked and I had to go back to work swinging a hammer until the book advance for "The Imaginings" (knock, knock, knock). Of course I'm still working on rewrites, but those should be done before the end of the year. Anyway, this is the second part of the Poker series (obviously) and runs about four pages. And one more thing, certain [facts] have been changed to protect the innocent.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Madison, Wisconsin.

I was looking through my computer case with Jennifer a couple nights ago. I’m not sure exactly what we were looking for. Nothing earth-shattering, I imagine, but late on a Saturday night, (or late for me, actually. I had just worked my first day back to construction after doing a whole lotta’ nothing for the past three months. And a Saturday, even. Needless to say, I was in my pajama pants reading on the couch by eight. Anyway…) sitting in the living room with Jennifer after her own long day, we were in the midst of some interesting anecdote which led me to the computer case, I’ve no doubt. I believe it was about Jews for Jesus, one of the many pamphlets I was handed in New York City later on my summer adventure. I always take pamphlets. You never know what gems of information you might stumble on. Especially in Vegas. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

But I was getting around to talking about Madison. I didn't even go to Las Vegas on this trip. And New York wasn’t for another couple weeks on my summer agenda. I was telling you about looking through my computer case. Along with the pamphlets and the pack of Lucky Strikes (for more information on these, read “Minneapolis, MN part two- Elsie’s Bowling Alley) I found many scraps of paper from along the journey. On a torn piece of newspaper from one of the local underground rags in Madison, I found this note to remind myself.

“The four ‘P’s’
-Parking Lot
-Prohibition
-Pig Pen
-Poker”

In part one of this segment I already explained my theory that if my cousin, Matt, had been around during the days of Prohibition, he would’ve owned a speak easy.

As to the Parking Lot, well, I scribbled the addendum “the Bat Cave.” You see, not only does my cousin own his own pool hall in Madison, one of the older billiards establishments (they even have actual billiards tables, sans pockets, a game of which Matt explained the rules, but I’ve since forgotten), but he also has his own parking space in what would appear to be just another warehouse-esque/possible building space next to the block where Cue-nique is located. (Follow that whole sentence? My God, I can’t believe Word let me get away with that one.). To get to his parking space, you go around the block, through a side parking lot, punch in a secret code, a bay door opens, up the ramp into an open level for discreet parking, complete with the surrounding square panel-sectioned warehouse style windows. We departed the batmobile and took the batpole to the ground level.

So there’s ‘Parking Lot.’ And the whole point of this section (there’s a point?) was Poker and Self-Help. Note that it’s not an either/or case.

I didn’t play Texas Hold-‘em (am I righting that write?) for anything more than a handful of nickels and dimes for seven years after that time in Missoula. But upon my arrival in Madison, Matt informed me that Cue-nique [wasn’t] hosting a game that evening. Twenty-five dollar buy-in. Nothing too major.

As far as I could tell, this game that [wasn’t] going on wasn’t exactly “legal,” but apparently previous employees of Cue-nique [weren’t] related to local cops, so nothing was going on. Plus, apparently of the fifty or so players that [wouldn’t] be there, many of the older players [hadn’t] been playing for “match sticks” for years already sitting at one of the shadowed booths or tables on the perimeter of the raised bar overlooking the poolroom floor, hosting at least fifteen pool tables to the best of my recollection. Which, by the way, was a little fuzzy for the few nights we spent at Cue-nique. Another perk of being related to the owner.

So I figured, what the hell? I had caught a few episodes of the World Series of Poker, had even played a game or so for small potatoes, like I said. It was still early on my trip. What was twenty-five bucks.

To make a long story short, turns out twenty-five bucks was about five minutes of play. I’ve learned better since (I’ll expand on this momentarily), but let’s just say that going “all-in” probably wasn’t the best idea on that first hand. As the first player out of the game, I spent the rest of my evening talking with Matt, drinking, and watching.

The players whittled down over the course of the next probably four hours until it was finally won by a regular to Cue-nique, affectionately known as Pig Pen. Relatively loud, a bit rotund, seemingly jovial, but apparently with occasional behavior contradicting normal social niceties, Pig Pen was an interesting study. While he took the eventual first place, I wondered at his tendency to show his cards even after everyone else had folded, an action that isn’t required in these circumstances and essentially lets your opponents know if they had been bluffed or not.

Regardless of all of this, had I made it past the first few cuts, I’m sure I still would’ve lost the big pot. What I’ve realized since is that this is true partially because I would’ve been afraid to lose. (Mostly it would’ve been lack of skill, of course, but I was looking for a way to quickly segue into my “Self-Help” portion of this segment. I should write damn books, I tell ya’. Hey, wait a minute…)

A couple weeks later, I played again in Maryland with family and a smaller buy-in, and took third. Then again a couple weeks ago here in Cedar City with some old friends from the college daze and walked away with a hundred bucks. Now I’m not saying how it’s much better to beat friends and family out of their money than it is a bunch of strangers in Madison (even though it sounds like it). What I’m saying is that I did better because I wasn’t afraid to lose. When it came to my friends and family, these were people whom I would’ve outright given money to had they asked, so I didn’t mind losing it to them after a good night of playing cards and catching up.

The key was, I wasn’t afraid of losing. (Okay, single reader, are you picking up on the motivational stuff, here?)

“Fear is the mind killer.”

"The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

“I’m afraid, Dave.”

Many times, envisioning failure only serves to create it. I was going to say that it’s similar to the idea that you can create your own successes, as well, but while I believe that to be partially true, I think a few other factors need to be involved, like some sort of talent in the area you want to succeed. However, all you need is your own fears and insecurities to orchestrate failure.

Okay, enough about that. It sure was a long way around to a couple cliché paragraphs, but I’ll just say two things. 1- There’s a reason things are cliché, and B- I really just wanted to say how I finally won a game of Texas Hold-‘em a couple weeks ago. Jennifer was there with me, watching me play, and that always helps to look cool in front of your new girlfriend. Plus, I’m sure she was a little bit of good luck as well.

I know I should say more about Madison. Lots of trees. I mean, thick with ‘em. Super pretty. First time I’d seen lightening bugs since I was a little kid in the South. Some bar with a huge tree dominating the interior (might’ve even been “Paul’s.”), etc…, but I’ll save that for the longer version of this trip which will optimally be published one day (knock, knock, knock). With all due respects, though, it was great seeing Matt and his girlfriend, Liz, as well as other family I hadn’t seen in years. And if you’re ever in Madison, be sure to stop in to Cue-nique and ask to see the batcave.

A quote from "Immortality"

2004-10-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this one the other day, and thought how it echoed p.d. diablo's sentiment on the homepage. Far more expansive, though.

"To load a program into the computer: this does not mean that the future has been planned down to the last detail, that everything is written 'up above.' For example, the program did not specify that in 1815 a battle would be fought near Waterloo and that the French would be defeated, but only that man is aggressive by nature, that he is condemned to wage war, and that technical progress would make war more and more terrible. Everything else is without importance, from the Creator's point of view, and is only a play of permutations and combinations within a general program, which is not a prophetic anticipation of the future but merely sets the limits of possibilities within which all power of decision has been left to chance."

-Milan Kundera
Immortality

Poker and Self-Help Books-part One

2004-10-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Author's note: Just a little over three pages, this piece transitions you, my one reader, from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Madison, Wisconsin during my Summer Tour.

Funny how the cards are played.

My history with Texas Hold-em Poker is dicey, at best. The first time I ran into the game was about seven years ago in Montana, before it became the game popularized by the recent televising of the World Series of Poker. I had just moved to Missoula and didn’t know a soul. I ended up wandering around downtown and ended up in front of Stockman’s bar.

Funny sidebar that actually has to do with karaoke… My first trip out of the two room shack that I had rented site-unseen, located amongst similar shacks and a few trailers in the industrial park of town, had been a venture across Broadway to what used to be the Limelight Bar. I don’t know if I knew they had karaoke that night (it might’ve been on the sign) or if it was just the closest bar in an unfamiliar town, but (similar to Stockman’s) I didn’t go back much after this particular evening. It was a Friday and the bar was full of cowboy hats and trucker caps. At the time, my hair was the longest it had been, probably down to my shoulder blades, and the song I chose to do was Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth,” one of my old favorites from my Utah daze. You know the one… “Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…”

What wasn’t exactly clear to me at the time was the fact that it was a protest song, and judging by the video playing on the big screen behind me as well as a few others in the bar (a video I had never seen during my previous performances… more on this later) there was a heavy slant towards Civil Rights in the song.

So while the long-haired hippy stood on stage singing, throngs of black children played on the screen behind, splashing in spraying water from opened hydrants on city streets and eating their popsicles. I finished the song, and somewhere in the distance, crickets were heard to chirp. Not a big hit apparently.

“Thank you! Goodnight! Don’t forget to tip your servers!”

Okay, now for a brief segue before returning to the main story.

Karaoke videos. Good Lord, they’re horrible. At some other point I’ll tell you the story of performing Waylon Jenning’s “Luckenbach, Texas” in a Chinese karaoke bar in Honolulu in front of a widescreen consisting entire of cows. But the American versions aren’t much better. Personally, as a singer, I never want to the video version. And sometimes it’s a gamble, because the songbook will have two listings for a song, and you just know the version you pick will be one with the video, and when you get up to do “Mamas, Don’t Let your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” there will be a bunch of pretty boys who have probably never even been within twenty feet of a horse sashaying around with a semi-modern version of Daisy Duke.

I used to joke about these actors, wondered who was putting on their resume that they played Johnny in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Turns out a friend of mine from college went to acting school in Florida, and one of their exercises involved making karaoke videos. When “Man Without a Band” eventually gets published, I will include an interview with Mr. Russ Benton, but if you wish to see him before then, you can catch him live in Las Vegas starring as Merlin in the show at Excalibur.

And now, back to gambling.

I was never a big gambler. Having spent enough time in poverty in my in-between colleges years, I’ve never been a big fan of losing money. Sure we had the nickel, dime, quarter games between friends in college. You might be surprised; some of those pots could get over a hundred bucks. But it was always between friends, and when you wanted to quit, just like Blackjack, you could walk away, with your winnings or whatever you managed to salvage.

Such isn’t the case in a serious game of Texas Hold-em. To get in the game, you buy in for a certain amount. Depending on the number of players, the winnings can then be doled out between the top winners or simply taken by the last person in the game. There are many variations I’m sure, but the important thing to know is probably the obvious. In many instances, you might walk away with nothing but the memories.

Most of my limited knowledge of the game has been picked up with the rest of America over the past year or so, but when I stumbled on a game seven years ago at the back of Stockman’s Bar (“liquor in the front, poker in the rear”) I barely remembered the order of winning hands from the old college games. Similar to the Limelight, Stockman’s is populated mostly by cowboys (again, probably obvious by the name), and while the guy dealing the cards was younger, most of the occupants of the table were well past college years. Now, while the guy actually dealt the cards, he was not actually “the dealer.” Montana law is, the bar can host the game, but they’re technically not “the house.” You play only against the other players. Or something like that. Whether or not the bar took a percentage of the buy-in was unclear to me, but judging by his come-hither comments, I would say the dealer was either working for the bar, or working for the other players. They had recognized a dummy, a dupe, lingering just outside the perimeter of the table.

“Why don’t you play?” the dealer asked. Five heads turned my direction.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

“Texas Hold-em,” he said. “It’s easy. Like regular poker, just a little different. Watch a few
hands, you’ll get it.”

I finished my beer and sat at the table. Yeah, I didn’t get it. Forty dollars and about five minutes later, I was stepping away from the table. The dealer handed me a card with a offer for a certain amount of “house credit,” telling me I should come back and play again another time, and everyone at the table smiled congenially, but I never played again in the back, or rather got poked again in the rear at Stockman’s.

I’m still getting to the self help section of this story, but it’s getting late, and I’m getting tired. But what I will say is that I didn’t play Texas Hold-em again for seven years, not until my summer trip this year.

My cousin, Matt McCabe, owns a pool hall in Madison, WI. Cue-nique Billiards. One thing I’ll say about Matt… I feel fairly certain that if these were still the days of Prohibition, Matt would own a speak-easy, instead.

An insertion near the End

2004-10-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

author's note: At just under four pages, this is a short anecdote/semi-epiphany I had nearing the end of my summer tour. No karaoke involved. I'll be getting back to that soon. I might have sped this one up a little at the end for the sake of brevity. Or maybe I'm just tired.

Labor Day weekend.
Driving from Portland to San Francisco.

“Life is a short, warm moment,
and death is a long, cold rest.
You get your chance to try
in the twinkling of an eye,
80 years with luck,
or even less.”
-Pink Floyd “Free Four”

So I survived the flights to Maui and back. 5000 miles in the air. Over the ocean, no less. But I survived.

Probably my worst flight experience (and minor, at that, I’m sure compared to more seasoned travelers) was flying back to Missoula, Montana, one winter a few years back. I had just visited my parents for the Christmas holidays in Utah, and my final connection from Salt Lake was in a puddle jumper. Okay, I realize it was a little bigger than say, perhaps, float planes, but it still had propellers. I’m not real comfortable with that.

In case I hadn’t explained (or for those of you who don’t know), while I’m okay with flying, I’ve lived most of my life with a fear of falling from heights. A few years ago, I came to agreeable grips with my fear of falling (a skydiving experience helps this considerably), and a few years before that I gave up any sense of control when I had to travel by airplane. I figured, one way or another, the plane was going to come down. But in all of these years, I still hadn’t given up the possibility that any one of my flights might come down in a hail of fire and twisted metal. It’s the horror writer in me, what can I say? That “Final Destination” movie didn’t help much, that’s for sure. Actually, that movie, combined with my natural fears played a big part in the development of my second book, currently in the works, “One Second Until the Hour.” (shameless future plug).

Anyway, for the sake of brevity (haven’t quite accomplished that yet), I was on this puddle jumper bouncing in mountain turbulence coming into the small Missoula airport, which was covered in snow and ice.

My friend, George Auckland (as in the guy who is working on my website), was my “airport pick-up guy.” This was pre-9/11, so he was able to wait in the terminal by the gate. A news crew was also allowed in the terminal. They were doing a piece on people returning after holiday travel. Now you gotta’ know George. Anyone who does could see this coming a mile away.

“You should film my friend, Paul,” he apparently told the crew. “He’s coming back from Utah.”

Actually, I’m not sure what exactly he said, but as I stepped off the platform to find a crowded waiting room, somehow the cameras found me. I’m sure I hadn’t slept too much and drank too much Bushmill’s over the visit. I think I said, “Well, I cheated death again.”

I never saw the report, but I don’t think they used it.

So I’ve always wondered if my death would come by plane, the one force of motion, and fast motion at that, I had given up any control over. But I survived the flight to Maui. And I was on my way to San Francisco to meet up with the guy who was editing my book for my agent.

In nearly 8000 miles on the road by this point, I had somehow managed to work my travel days in at times that excluded heavy traffic. Of course, traffic is considerably heavier on the East Coast than the West, but most of my driving had transpired either on a weekday, or a Sunday at the worst. But here I was, near the end of my trip, ready to be done with almost three months on the road, and traveling on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. Out of Portland. Towards San Francisco.

Traffic was practically bumper-to-bumper through all of Oregon. Into Northern California it started to thin out, but I was already realizing that I wasn’t going to make it to my evening meeting with Adam in San Francisco. I hadn’t convinced myself yet, though, so when I got the opportunity mid-afternoon, with some flat ground and not too many other vehicles, I put on the steam a little.

On a dusty patch of road about two hundred miles north of the Bay Area, I had probably just started to relax. The day was cooling off, the shadow of my truck stretching longer towards the East as it bumped along through the dirt and brush. Window rolled down. Listening to Tuatara, a heavy instrumental band, no lyrics at all actually. Again like movie-theme music, but more tribal and diverse. (How about that for vague?).

Suddenly, about a hundred yards ahead of me, I see a flash of something big flip skyward, gleaming of metal, a swerving of vehicles and a plume of flying dust as whatever it was flew off the road into the dirt.

Like the possibility of wildlife on a dark highway at night, these are the moments you anticipate when you’ve spent many miles on the road by yourself. There’s plenty of time to think, and you imagine how you would deal with the worst case scenario (or maybe this is just me.)[1]

Instinct kicks in. I quickly check behind me and start tapping my breaks to signal any vehicles behind me, followed by a quicker succession of actual breaking. Traffic slows to 60…50…35… 25. Vehicles have pulled off to the side. A full-sized pickup truck is stopped in the median with an empty flatbead trailer. No vehicles on the road seem damaged, but the cloud of dust from whatever was on that trailer has yet to settle. As I continue slowly past, just seconds after the incident, I see a construction Bobcat flipped over on the west side of the Interstate.

The dust clears as I pass the accident. My first thought is, “That poor guy who lost that piece of equipment. Just ruined his weekend.” My second thought? Had the cards been layed out differently, I could’ve been right behind that trailer, doing 70 miles an hour, when that probably half-ton piece of machinery flipped off, for whatever reason, a bad tie-down, a faulty clamp, one 2 inch screw that just happened to work itself loose from a bolted down bracket. In a flash, it could’ve flipped onto my truck, and that would have been the….

But it didn’t. And my second thought was what a tenuous grip we have on this life. What peril we put ourselves in by just waking up in the morning. Just last night, winding down, sitting and listening to the radio, I saw a Black Widow spider just a couple feet away. And today I might have seen a Brown Recluse. (I probably shouldn’t say all of this about the wild kingdom, otherwise Jennifer might not come back by.).

But that tenuous grip is determined, dammit! That’s what makes this life so great, if we appreciate it. Death is nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing we can do about it, not when our clock is up, not when the cards are laid out on the table. Aces over eights.

Maybe that’s the great test of this life. Do you live in fear of death? Or do you live in celebration of life? We have to take advantage of every moment we’re given. Even in the hard times, we are given another day to see the sun and breath the air. As I said a couple years ago, just before I was to leave a comfortable life in Montana for an uncertain one in Southern California, “the only thing you can be certain about is where you are right now. So you might as well enjoy it.”

[1] This often includes stories for highway patrol in case you’re pulled over for speeding. And I know I’m not the only one who does that.hors note:

A little Waylon

2004-09-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

"The highway she's a hotter than nine kinds of hell.
The rides are as scarce as the rain
when your down to your last shuck with nothing to sell
and too far away from the train

Been a good month of Sunday's, and a guitar ago
had a tall drink of yesterday's wine.
Left a long string of friends, some sheets in the wind,
and some satisfied woman behind.

Hey ride me down easy Lord, ride me on down.
Leave word in the dust where I lay.
Say I'm easy come, easy go,
and easy to love when i stay.

I've put snow on the mountain, raised hell on the hill.
I locked horns with the devil himself.
Been a rodeo bum, a son of a gun,
and a hobo with stars in his crown

Ride me down easy Lord, ride me on down.
Leave word in the dust where I lay.
Say I'm easy come, easy go,
and easy to love when I stay."

Ride Me Down Easy
Waylon Jennings

Minneapolis, MN- Part two- Elsie's bowling alley

2004-09-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

Author's note: This second act of the Minneapolis evening runs about five pages, double-spaced. Again, there are inconsequential footnotes. enjoy.

I won’t go into all of the finer details, rules of etiquette, and archetypes of karaoke just yet. Because this night was interesting enough so far without them.

After a few more songs, a couple more drinks, and quite a few more laughs, Bret and I parted ways with Jennifer in the Nye’s parking lot. The rain had stopped in the Twin Cities and a light fog was just starting to drift in from the Mississippi River just a couple blocks away. The red lights from Nye’s blooded the thin haze, and should’ve been a warning.

Red sky at night, karaoke singers take flight.

My good friend, Michelle Carr, made a good observation when I was visiting in Bloomington, Illinois, about a week later. She said, “Not much good happens after midnight.” Thinking back on my bar days, I would say that’s about right. Or maybe I might amend to say that not much good happens after midnight if you’re still out on the town. And when I tell you of the adventure I had in Bloomington, you’ll really agree. But I won’t have been there for another week or so (how about that for verb-tense?).

For now, Bret and I left Nye’s Polonaise for Elsie’s Bowling Alley. Okay, a brief word about bowling alleys. Any bowling alley worth its salt hosts at least one of two things. Either “Cosmic Bowling” (with the flashing lights, black lights, disco balls and such) or karaoke. Personally, I prefer my bowling straight, without all the bells and whistles, but in the right mood, cosmic bowling can be a hoot. And the kids like it. But I’m not a bowler, at least not professionally. I sing karaoke. And as it was a Saturday, which meant Elsie’s had karaoke.

I’m sure you can imagine the stark difference between singing in a Polish restaurant/bar/polka hall versus the darkened lounge of a bowling alley past midnight on a Saturday night.[1]

I knew going over this late that I might not get a song in, but I figured I’d throw out the tip money again and see where that got me. Didn’t figure it happened too often in Elsie’s. Stepping out of my truck, I put on my cowboy hat and made my way inside. Bret and I sidled up to the bar, just on the other side of the beer taps. At the opposite end of the bar the singing was in full, drunken force. Vocals too loud. I looked around for the songbook as Bret ordered up a round of tequilas and beers.

“I’ve been sipping my tequila, tonight,” he hollored at me over an inebriated Pat Benetar. I had noticed him doing just that at Nye’s. Personally, I’m a whiskey sipper. Tequila is usually just in shots, but I nodded anyway. He held up the glass (must’ve been doubles) and examined the liquid gold. “I’ve never done it before tonight,” he said. “Just seemed right. And it’s pretty good.”

So it was decided. We would sip our tequila, and it wasn’t bad. At some point I grabbed a book just before a guy in his mid-thirties, a little portly with a thick shock of black hair and matching goatee, started collecting them from the bar. I handed him my request with a few bucks and said, “I’d really appreciate it.” Later in the evening, after I had already done my song, he walked by and said I did a good job, and he appreciated it, but I think he was one of the few. My version of Waylon’s “Lonesome, Onry, and Mean,” while more-than-adequately rendered was appreciated by relatively few in the bar this particular evening. Bret told me it sounded great… but he had never heard the song before.

After an adventure through the small bowling alley to the restrooms, I returned to find a pack of Lucky Strikes on the bar next to my drink. I had been trying to not smoke, but tonight I was failing.

“A little luck for the writer,” Bret said. Or maybe it was, “You can’t be a writer without a little luck.” Or possibly, “A little luck for the rest of your trip.” Whatever it was, from a fellow writer, it was cool. I still have the pack of Lucky Strikes almost four months later, but the reason I still have them is more than just because of the luck. I’m getting to it, don’t worry.

The other thing I noticed was a woman a couple seats Bret. She was clearly intoxicated, swaying on her barstool, occasionally grabbing the bar to keep from going over. She wore Daisy Duke cutoff shorts, showing off a nice set of legs. She might’ve even been wearing a red-and-white checked midrift shirt tied in the middle. Or maybe that was just my boyhood fantasies kicking in. Point being, D. was a reasonably attractive woman, who had definitely seen better days. Like maybe the past five or ten years had been especially hard on her.

I think Bret might have said a word or two in her general direction. Maybe we all toasted, but for whatever reason, she decided to start a conversation with Bret and me. Now I’m half-deaf to begin with, not to mention the blaring music, so I couldn’t catch most of what she was saying. Something about not getting to sing, or maybe she didn’t get to sing enough, or they didn’t play the song she wanted. She cursed the young bartender when he passed by, but he only smiled and shook his head, keeping himself busy. I was only hearing about every ninth word, and she really seemed more to be talking with Bret anyway, so I took the liberty of looking around.[2]

When I turned back, D. had started singing to Bret. I found out later the song was by Loretta Lynn, but all I heard at the time was her spelling D-I-V-O-R-C-E repeatedly. This might have been all it took, because Bret abandoned me there to go to the bathroom. I paused for a moment, probably could’ve even gotten away without saying anything in the loud bar until Bret returned to take up conversation. But I was curious, always have been curious about strangers. People in general, really.

“Rough night?” I asked and slid over a couple stool away from D.

“You can say that again,” she said.

“Rough night?”

D. laughed. Yeah, she had probably been a heartbreaker in high school. Probably in college, as well, but I doubted she went. And then she told me her story. Stories, rather. My earlier approximation that she had seen some hard years was correct. It was a common story. Woman and a series of wrong guys. In D.’s case, especially bad guys. She had a daughter in her early teens; she lit up when talking about her, but then she would darken and say that she should be home. In between these comments, she would tell me how she took strength from Patsy Cline, but especially Loretta Lynn. She detailed out many of Loretta’s life struggles and successes. D. told me that she was trying to live the life of a strong woman, but when it came right down to it, she admitted to me that she couldn’t leave the life she was living now even if she wanted to. During all of this, I caught Bret scribbling something a couple seats down from us, but I pawned it off to another writer in an interesting environment. I offered D. a few words of encouragement and inspiration, much as I could. Said she sparkled when she talked about her daughter, and that was real important, and told her she deserved a better man. When we all stood to leave I offered her a ride if she needed one, but was relieved to find out that she just lived around the corner.

We stepped out into the damp night, and I watched her walk down the sidewalk.

“Take care, sweetie,” I called, and she raised a hand before rounding the corner. I hoped some of the things I said to her would make a difference, make her life a little better, but I thought she might not even remember we talked at all. Maybe somewhere in her subconscious.

“That was interesting,” Bret said and laughed.

“She’s got a tough road to hoe,” I said. I looked down the sidewalk for just another moment.
“I’ll follow you,” I said to Bret.

I climbed back in my truck and started it up. Just over 1600 miles of my trip so far under my belt. I was in the “B’s” of my music collection. Black Heart Conspiracy was playing. Moody music, a little on the darker side, heavy on the instrumental. Fitting of the circumstances wrapping up the evening at Elsie’s. Again, I felt like I was in a David Lynch movie. I opened the Lucky Strikes and noticed something scrawled on the front cover in pencil. PABLO, look up. There were arrows. Inside the lid, under PABLO again, scribbled much darker this time was written, D’s husband incarcerated.

I’m not sure why he wrote it, maybe because he was worried that I was hitting on her. Or maybe simply so I would remember it for this very moment of relating the story (I’ve left out some of the details out of consideration). Whatever it was, I laughed good and hard to know what he had been so busy writing down in the bar.

Apparently he could hear better than he was admitting.

Funny afternote: On the drive home, I noticed that I was feeling very energized, buzzing almost. Jaw felt tight, and I found myself obsessively rubbing my tongue on the roof of my mouth. It was a strong enough sensation for the drive that when we got back to the Guild residence, I asked Bret if he had slipped an upper in my drink. He laughed, and I could tell by his reaction that he hadn't. I was still skittish for about another half-hour and was left to wonder if D. had perhaps put some sort of reverse-Mickey Finn in my beer. To what end, I couldn't possibly imagine.

[1] I think Elsie’s might have also had the cosmic bowling. At some point when I went to find the bathroom, I wandered past their maybe ten lanes. Black lights, glowing green strips signaling the runway down to the strike. But no one seemed to be playing. It was kind of eerie, actually, in a David Lynch sort of way.
[2] Turns out Bret was only catching about every fourth word D. was saying, and that even that was mostly incoherent.

2004-09-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

Home on deranged.

The Fool and the Hermit

2004-09-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

Authors Note: Okay, this is a long one, too (5 standard double spaced MS Word pages) and it's not about karaoke. But it is an interesting bit of discussion on the tarot cards of the Fool and the Hermit, and how they relate to my life. My next post will be the second part of the evening at Elsie's Bowling Alley in Minneapolis, MN with Bret and the young woman who loved Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, and who may or may not have slipped something in my drink.

21st September, 2004

So I'm reworking the website, specifically the homepage. Armed with the help of a good suggestions from a friend in Saudi Arabia, Rico (keep your eyes open for his information when I get my referral page started), as well as the ever-ability of my webmaster, Georgie, we have some good ideas coming to this site. So keep checking back. And I'll try to get something new posted here at least twice a week.

but tying one to the other, while doing some redesign work on the home page, I've been searching a variety of playing and tarot cards looking for images (and optimally royalty-free images, at that). One of the cards is definitely going to be some sort of joker card ("other jokers I know"- the referral page), and originally I was thinking about using the tarot card of the Fool to represent my travelblog. A few words about the Fool.

I should probably stop before I go much further with this discussion for a few words regarding my opinion as far as the occult is concerned, more specifically the art/ability of seeing the future: Do I believe it's possible? Of course (didn't you read "About the Author"?). Do I think we should have access to it? Much as it would be great to know our future, probably not.

To quote my good friend, B.H. Duk, from his novel-in-progress Travels with Duk.

"Dante Alighieri put fortune tellers and the like on their own level of hell, where they circled for eternity with their heads on backwards, weeping into the slashes on their back. Or at least that’s what my translation said. Now I wouldn’t be so severe, but I do believe, regardless of whether or not these people actually have the vision, we shouldn’t be privy to it. Because anything you hear about the future will effect how you act in the present, when in reality, I prefer to just act in the present, and let the future play itself out as it will... but I won’t say that I’m not intrigued by the possibility."

But I was talking about possibly using the Fool's card as a link to my travelblog/journal/mind.

"With all his worldly possessions in one small pack, the Fool travels he knows not where... the Fool is the card of infinite possibilities. The bag on the staff indicates that he has all he need to do or be anything he wants, he has only to stop and unpack. He is on his way to a brand new beginning. But the card carries a little bark of warning as well. Stop daydreaming and fantasising and watch your step, lest you fall and end up looking the fool...

In addition, they likely have no idea where they're going or what they're going to do. But that doesn't matter. For the Fool, the most important thing is to just go out and enjoy the world. To see what there is to see and delight in all of it.

Unfortunately, in this childlike state the person is likely to be overly optimistic or naive. A Fool can be a Fool... they're so busy daydreaming of what might be that they're ignoring what is. They're about to fall right off a cliff. Time for them to listen to that watchful little dog, which might be a concerned friend, a wise tarot reader, or just their instincts.

As a card, the Fool ultimately stands for a new start... There's more than just change, renewal, and a brand new beginning in the Fool, there's also movement, a fresh, exciting new time."

(-courtesy of Aeclectic Tarot-- www.aeclectic.net)

additionally,

"...the original Italian name of the card, il Matto, should be discussed: "Fool" is a slightly too liberal interpretation of this expression, for which a closer translation would probably be "the Lunatic" or "the Madman".In older times, when freedom of speech was yet to come, lunatics have always been entitled to express themselves freely, to say things which others could not, simply because their crazy words would not be given credit, although sometimes they were true: their insanity almost acted as a sort of intellectual shield or privilege."

(--courtesy of "The Fool and The Joker" from http://www.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards.htm. Lots of other interesting stuff there.)

Anyone bored yet? If so, please reply to my email (manwithoutaband@yahoo.com) and tell me that I'm rambling on too long about nothing. Or, for those of you already tying this information to my life, feel free to tell me to stop talking about my self and get back to the karaoke stories.

For everyone else, I chose not to use the Fool card for two reasons, both more pragmatic than cosmic. The first was that the Fool card seemed too close to the Joker card which it would share close space with. Second, the main image of a fool that I could find that wasn't copyrighted (I've since started experimenting on my own with MS Paint) was the very familiar Rider-Waite-Smith Deck, which is a relatively effeminate Fool, not exactly what I was shooting for, cool as the significance of the Fool was.

Then I stumbled on the Hermit. The image immediately appealed to me because it is the same featured on the inside album jacket of Zeppelin IV. (I own all of their original albums on CD, as well as quite a few on vinyl.) Then I checked out www.aeclectic.net again.

"After a long and busy lifetime, building, creating, loving, hating, fighting, compromising, failing, succeeding, the Fool feels a profound need to retreat. In a small, rustic home deep in the woods, he hides, reading, cleaning, organizing, resting or just thinking. But every night at dusk he head out, traveling across the bare, autumnal landscape. He carries only a staff and a lantern.

It is during these restless walks from dusk till dawn, peering at and examining whatever takes his fancy, that he sees and realizes things he's missed, about himself and the world. It is as if the secret corners in his head were being slowly illuminated, corners he never knew existed. In a way, he has become the Fool again; as in the beginning, he goes wherever inspiration leads him. But as the Fool, his staff rested on his shoulder, carrying unseen his pack...was like the pack, whatever it was [that] he could be was wrapped up, unknown. The Hermit's staff leans out before him, not behind. And it carries a lantern, not a pack. The Hermit is like the lantern, illuminated from within by all he is."

but wait, here's where it gets good.

"Represented by Virgo, the Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. This is not a time for socializing; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. Nor is it a time for action, discussion or decisions. It is a time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent during this time of withdrawal. But such times lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity...

One of the important things about this card is that the Hermit is always shown on the move. He's never locked away in his reclusive cell, he's always out wandering, searching. The Hermit is the restless mind of the Virgo, always gathering information, analyzing, making connections. Virgos are skeptics, and if anyone is going to stick a lantern into a dark place and take a good look at what's going on, it is a Virgo.

The Hermit is a card of connections and enlightenment. Combined with a desire to just "be alone,"... they're likely to be grumpy and anti-social. But for the Querent (if no one else!) this is a special time. Like an artist who hides for days then emerges to paint a masterpiece, this quiet time allows all the pieces to fall into place. So go ahead and encourage them to go on late night drives, long walks, hide in their room or go on retreat for a month. When they come back, they'll see everything in a brand new light. It'll be the best thing for them, and for everyone else in their lives."

Whew! That was quite a little treatise on the Fool and the Hermit. And somehow I managed to say nothing about myself. Those of you who know me might chuckle a little here. For the rest of you, in reality I just summarized in five pages the past five years of my life and probably the pattern for the next fifty, a trail that will switchback and forth between Fool and Hermit.

I'll work on brevity in the future... maybe just say that I like to travel a lot, and then I stay inside for long periods of time.

Nye's Polonaise- Minneapolis, MN- Part One

2004-09-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

Author's note: This is a long one. It's the first in a series I will be putting in about the various karaoke adventures. I'll mix it up with shorter more "journal" experiences, but anytime you see a location in the title, be forewarned. Also, the numbers you will see in brackets through the piece are actually footnotes. They're humorous (or so I'd like to think), but not that important to the story, so feel free to skip them.

Without further adieu...

July 3rd, 2004

I wonder if my grandfather, my namesake, Paul Daniel Dail the first, Baba, liked to sing. I’m pretty sure my father is a strong baritone, and I remember giggling as a child when he would break out his booming bass voice to sing to my mom. But I’m not so sure about Baba. I have a hard time matching up the polished professionalism that I associated with my grandfather as a child to the relative rambunctious nature that surrounds karaoke, but for some reason many of the places I’ve partaken in the form have been surrounded by restaurants that would be one hundred percent Baba’s type of place. Big booths, stark colors, oranges, reds. The waitresses call you “hon.” Not because they’re flirting or trying to get a big tip, but mostly because they’re a good bit your senior and good at their jobs. The food is heavy, and you usually overeat. And maybe drink a bit too much.

In San Diego, I went out with my Uncle Mike to a steak house. He had introduced it as “a restaurant your grandfather would’ve loved.” Uncle Mike is great. He’s like Santa Claus in a cowboy hat. Mike’s choice of restaurants was Baba’s style, with the color of choice being dark and red. But they also had karaoke at one end of the restaurant, and this was the first I was led to wonder about Baba’s voice. After the surf and turf and a few drinks, I talked myself into joining the singing. In honor of my host, I chose the country fare. Waylon, Willie, and a scorching “Ring of Fire,” if I do say so myself, all the while Mike feeding me drinks.

Nye’s Polonaise in Minneapolis (www.nyespolonaise.com), while vastly different in many ways, was of the same vein. A polish restaurant/bar/polka hall featuring a nightly band with a collective age of probably 700, Nye’s was opened in the late 40’s. Apparently the most recent remodel was sometime in the seventies if my limited knowledge of interior decorating serves me correct. It’s gold in Nye’s. Red walls, I believe (but I’m having a difficult time remembering the first song I did, so I can’t be sure. More on that later.). Hanging next to the entrance was a 3’ by 4’ black and white photo of the owner, a balding and somewhat rotund Al Nye. A subtle grin barely raised on one side of his mouth under the pencil-thin mustache, Al seems to preside over the festivities, including performances carried out at a piano karaoke bar hosted by Lou Snider, who is again probably nearing the century mark.[1]

I was meeting Jennifer Marcy. Jennifer was my first roommate in the house in Missoula, Montana, that would later come to be known as El Rancho Diablo, The Uncommon Commune.[2]

We hadn’t seen each other in probably seven years (or spoken really), almost to the date. All in all, I had twelve roommates (thirteen counting myself) in six years at Diablo, but Jennifer was the only one that I actually wept a little on her parting from Missoula.

Tonight she looks just as great as when she left for Las Vegas that Fourth of July. Conversation comes easy and fast, and I’m once again pleased to find another friend who I can pick up with like it was only yesterday. The other ones are the worst, right? When you visit someone you haven’t seen in years and there’s really nothing to talk about except for what happened years ago.

Anyway, such was far from the case with Jennifer. It was a couple cocktails into the evening before we ordered appetizers and only when they arrived did we order dinner. I ordered the Polish sampler. Probably not the best idea, but damn! was it tasty. With sausage and kraut and a few breaded and fried things including something with the shape of an extra large egg except it was made of some white, thicker-than-cornbread substance with a little clump of something red where the embryo would’ve been. Now keep in mind that we’re about four drinks in at this point, but we both end up in hysterical laugher over the fact that, while it may have been a cabbage roll, it looked a little more like an alien pod and neither of us were sure we wanted to sample. Next thing you know we’d be running around in our underwear with creatures bursting from our chests.[3]

At some point I ventured towards the bathrooms, which were through the polka hall/bar. The band was already in full swing, the five or six of them somehow cramped on a stage that couldn’t have been more than 5’ by 10’. There were a few older couples dancing and I bounced my way through. The bathroom was a strange mix of Vitalis, old cologne and urine. I stand to relieve myself at the first pissing trough I’ve seen since Montana and chuckle at the polka music crooning just outside the door behind me.

I returned from the restroom to find the obvious regulars starting to take their place around the piano bar. I forgot to mention that Jennifer had arrived a little before me and set us up at possibly the best seat in the house… next to, of course, the Coveted 8 bar chairs wrapping a half-moon around Lou as she belts out another under an oddly stern portrait of Chopin. I won’t lie to you. I was a little intimidated. You see, there were no television monitors with the words conveniently displayed and lit up when you were supposed to be singing them. Luckily I discovered that Lou typed up the words to all of the songs she knew (which was a pretty healthy amount, I must say), but it didn’t help the fact that you had to know when to sing those words and keep up with Lou’s occasionally funny timing. For the first hour, while we finished our dinners, the Coveted 8 held most of the show. They didn’t stand from their raised chairs, and were very cordial to each other.[4]

I don’t know how many other people were putting in requests, but few were getting past the Frank Sinatra’s, Dean Martin’s, and a host of others I wasn’t familiar with but was guessing to be pre-Brat Pack. Oh yeah, another funny thing. Usually karaoke has the little slips of paper where there’s a space for you to write your name, song name, and a number that corresponds with a compact disc compilation of songs. At Nye’s, you write your name, song name, and a page number that corresponds with a book full of Lou’s lyrics. And you write it on a cocktail napkin.
Well, I was getting pretty well familiar with cocktail napkins by this point in the evening and decided I was ready to look at the book. Now most karaoke bars have eight or ten or more copies of their song lists spread throughout the room. Far as I could tell, there was just the one at the right side of the half-moon bar.[5]

It looked to be a tight space, maybe three feet between the wall and a gentlemen probably in his eighties, white dress shirt, dark slacks. He was there with his wife. She was probably in her twenties. Just kidding. Mr. L__ gave me a grandfatherly smile as I walked up and looked at Lou’s lyrics, a compilation of over a hundred songs, if I recall correctly. Mr. L__ had a book in front of him that looked like it had at least 500 pages, all in plastic covers like the smaller books, with a variety of sticky-note place holders at different pages, and when I asked him about it, Mr. L__ patted the book and said, “This is my hymnal.”

I chuckled and didn’t bother reaching for the book. Instead I leafed through the smaller collection until I found one that I thought I could pull off pretty well and would be a crowd pleaser, or at least as close as I could come to pleasing this crowd. I chose Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.” I conscientiously dropped a dollar in the tip bowl, set my scrawled-on napkin on the bar and waited my turn, figuring the tip might boost the stranger ahead in the ranking.

The night I first was inspired with the idea of a karaoke travelogue, I was in a karaoke bar with mostly college kids. I’m not sure how it happened, maybe one of his buddies signed him up without his knowledge, maybe he just got bumped ahead a song, but for whatever reason, while I was talking with the bartender, I started hearing familiar strains of a song I’d wanted to try for quite some time. I had looked over at the guy on stage who was probably twenty-two. He had come from a table of five, one other nearly-identical looking guy, and three girls. The guy singing had previously butchered a song so I wasn’t paying much attention to his next endeavor, but this particular song caught my attention.

And he was butchering it as well. I looked over as he rambled off the lyrics of one of the saddest country love songs, “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.” He looked mildly sheepish at the small crowd and said something about never having heard the song at which point I shouted in amazement, and somewhat drunkenly decided to help him out.

I had, after all, just pulled off a scorching “Holly Holy,” by the romance man himself, Neil Diamond, so I was feeling confident. I hopped up and joined him (or rather, took over, even though he wouldn’t just wave the white flag and get off the stage) and was surprised to find that I was the only one in the bar who knew the song.

For any others of you out there, “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain” is off the “Red Headed Stranger,” a great album about a preacher whose wife leaves him for an old lover, and insane with grief, the preacher tracks them down and kills them both. The title medley (which includes the aforementioned song) is a twenty-six minute masterpiece of storytelling song, and it starts something like this…

“It was a time of the preacher,
When the story began
Of the choice of a lady
And the love of a man.

And how he loved her so dearly,
He went out of his mind,
When she left him for someone
That she’d left behind.

And he cried like a baby.
He screamed like a panther
In the middle of the night.
And he saddled his pony,
And he went for a ride.

It was the time of the preacher,
In the year of ’01.
Now the preachin’ is over,
And the lesson’s begun.”

Certain songs just resonate, you know?

I think tonight at Nye’s Polonaise, had I been able to talk Lou into it, and had she possessed all of the music, I would’ve shot the moon on the full 26 minutes. But all she had was the one song.
I thought I did pretty well, but again, the pressure was on. Unless you’re sitting at one of the Coveted 8 seats, the guest vocalists have to sing from the same narrow spot as the song list at the end of the bar. Without the benefit of the teleprompter, I asked Lou to signal me when it was time to start singing. Once I got going, it was pretty smooth sailing. Mostly I watched Lou for my cues, but a couple times I looked around. The 8 were giving nods and smiles of approval. I even got a pack on the back from Mr. L__ when I finished, and Lou made a comment that I needed a bandana and braids. So I was feeling pretty good.[6]

Just as I sat back down, Bret Gemlich walked in.

Bret is a good guy. He’s a friend of Mike and Britt. A fellow writer, he lives at a cabin in Wisconsin and is basically striving for a similar lifestyle of working repose as I would like to continue pursuing. This visit, he has the look of a rock star, but not the glam rock style. More like a grunge rocker from the 90’s who managed a smooth transition into the next millennium and still managed to hold onto the longer hair.[7]

Bret joined the group and the dynamic changed. For the good, of course. I was riding the high of a successful song and the buzz of a few cocktails, and now I had two good friends who didn’t know each other at the same table. Naturally in such circumstances the first topic of conversation is karaoke, and Bret added his own story of being on a train in China. Apparently it was a long trip, and over the P.A. they started up the singing. As the only American on the train at the time, there was considerable cajoling for Bret to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

“And that’s a tough song to sing,” Bret told us in our booth at Nye’s. I thought on some of the slaughters I had heard of our national anthem and laughed.

Bret lit a cigarette and took a sip from his tequila. “So I sang ‘Take Me out to the Ballgame’ instead.”

It wasn’t long before I was called up again, this time for “Crackin’ Rosie.” After I sat down, the karaoke philosophy began. This is inevitable.

[1] The polka hall is reputed to be pretty raucous as well, but I opted to spend the evening with Lou and the coveted eight.
[2] Depending on when this book gets published (knock, knock, knock), you might have already heard of this place in a fictional world. At first, my grandmother was amazed at the string of women housemates that I wasn’t dating, but she soon pawned it off on “Three’s Company.”
[3] Yet another pop-culture reference, but if you haven’t seen the movie Alien, put down this book and go to the video store. Oh yeah, the red stuff turned out to be little pieces of bacon. Now that’s healthy livin’.
[4] Personally, I always stand when I sing. You get better air from your diaphragm that way.
[5] Again, it was later discovered that there was a stack of song listings on the piano bar, but only one book of lyrics.
[6] Later Jennifer told me that while I was singing, Mr. L__ looked back at her and gave her the thumbs up.
[7] When I first met Bret, his hair was buzzed down to nearly nothing. I found out that he is actually of the same school of thought as myself. Haircuts are scheduled about once a year.

Patience, grasshopper

2004-09-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

So I'm still getting back to normal life. Took the weekend to unpack, unwrap, and unwind from almost three months on the road. I realize that this isn't a story from my karaoke travels, and for that I apologize, but it's my birthday (inquire for mailing address) and after a few beers I realized "damn, I better to put something on this thing to keep my one reader interested."

[he sat for a moment in silence and tried to think of something interesting to say before realizing...]

What the hell? If you've come to read this of your own volition, as opposed to being forced to read the long-winded mass emails I normally send, you must have some interest in the goings-on of my life, even if only normal life

(you care. you really care!)

But even my normal life is hard to define, and I feel like a new plot is developing where my normal life of being on the road for the past few months is about to have a major change. Yes, my friends, I actually have to go back to work.

(pause for unsympathetic booing and dodging of rotten fruit and vegetables)

Between projects for the folks, both of physical labor and the mental requirements, I also have the impeding "REWRITE" of The Imaginings. And not long after, probably back to swinging a hammer for a living until the book is sold (knock, knock, knock).

Too long already to be discussing my everyday affairs? I recognize that I'm no Seinfeld and realize that it's probably not in my best interests to be rambling for pages "about nothing."

But I will say that the most intriguing birthday gift I was given was the reintroduction into my life of a girl-now-woman from my past. In order to protect the innocent (at least for now) I'll refrain from using any names, but I will say that she's a big fan of Gillian Welch and even gave me one of her CD's. A couple friends of mine from Montana had previously recommended Gillian, saying that much of her music was the female answer to many male country songs, in that her females win out in the end. Now you all know what a big fan I am of Willie Nelson's "Red Headed Stranger" album, so I was certainly curious. And what I will say so far is that I feel similar to Gillian as I do to the unnamed woman. So far, pretty damned good, and I look forward to discovering more.

But I am a man, of course. And so I'll wrap up with a little Johnny Cash, the Man in Black who died on my 30th birthday, one year ago today.

"Delia, oh Delia,
Delia all my life.
If I hadn't have shot poor Delia,
I'd have taken her for my wife.

Delia's gone,
one more round,
Delia's gone."

Full Circle

2004-09-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

Howdy friends,

Well, after 10,000 miles on the road (and about 5000 in the air), my MidWest/East Coast/Canada/Montana/Maui trip is nearly over. With only a couple more days until I return to Southern Utah to get back to work, both on the book and on actual paying jobs (the book will be paying soon. knock, knock, knock), I find myself in Logan, Utah with my good friends, Ben and Steph Baldwin. I'm taking a few relaxed breaths here, and then looking forward to settling/slowing down for a few months. I think my truck is echoing this sentiment.

Keep your eyes on this site. I plan on adding segments detailing my karaoke travels across the country over the next few weeks.

Thanks again to all of my friends and family that put me up, put up with me, showed me their own versions of "home," and made me feel welcome there.

More to come...

P.

p.s.- Thanks again to George Auckland for setting up my site and posting that little bit of flattery.