The Harvest of Love

I really like the Decemberists, "Hazards of Love." I think I'm the only one outside of the hardcore fans. That's alright though. It's got some great moments and I appreciate the process/goal of the thing. Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.

Band practice the other night was really amazing. We were going at it until almost 1:00 a.m. in MJ and Rob's apartment. No instruments, no music, just pizza and a couple of Bud Lights.

I have to call Billy Stratton today on my drive up to camp - he can explain to me the fostering of an independant spirit and how it relates to Motorcycles.

Ilana comes home in about four weeks.

Faf will be gone when I get back.

Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.

Next Time

Last night I rode through three different neighborhoods in Queens. It was as if someone flipped to the next slide on my Fisher Price View Master every couple of blocks. The 3-D images came with the smell of food, coffee and Shisha tobacco. I told my dad about it and the only thing he asked was, "Was it safe?" (I think he meant the bicycling but who knows? He probably meant the neighborhoods.) I reassured him, "Yes, of course it's safe. I wear a helmet and I've got blinky lights front and back and fenders and reflective clothing. It's safe as sitting at my desk at work."

I should've said, "HELLLL NO! Riding a bicycle in New York City is never safe. You'd be safer covering your body with honey and hugging a beehive, especially if you were allergic to bees! And the way I ride? Shit, last week I claimed to be a modern-day cowboy on Second Avenue. Cowboys aren't safe; they get shot up by the entire Mexican army at the end of the movie.

Next up, I mention the motorcycle I want and financing and procuring insurance for it. He asked, "Are you sure that now is a good time to invest in a motorcycle when you might be better off waiting a little bit?" I calmly replied, "Well, I'm going to wait a few months before I act on anything because I need the buzz of the new hobby to wear off."

Instead of my peepee kiddy pool response, I should've said, "When is it a good time to invest in a motorcycle?" I mean, it might as well be a bungee-jumping cord! Or better yet, I should've gone all out and asked him about parachute insurance.

Why oh why do I lie lie lie? Next time he drastically alters the conversation, ruining the journey towards bonding, I'm going to disarm him with a dollop of reality. Just slosh it on there, like I'm drinking hot chocolate. Hot chocolate can burn your mouth by the way - I mean, never mind if it tastes good or new or different, it'll burn your mouth.

Despite all this, it's a good thing when your parents are parents and not your buddies. After all, your buddies are the guys driving the party wagon. Your parents are the ones who bail you out of jail the next morning.

Nerd

I had my first cigarette when I was twelve. My friend **** and I sat on the field at Bronxville School and, well, back up. I don't remember where we got it. I think we may have had a whole pack of them. Anyway, we were sitting there on the field and we had a camel light in our hands. There was this girl in our class who had a really hot older sister and she was sun bathing about thirty yards from us. So we took this cigarette and I pulled out my Swiss army knife and held the magnifying glass to the tip of it. Smoke appeared and the gun powder paper caught and all of a sudden we were holding a smoldering death stick. Hahahahaha. We didn't cough or anything - the trick was to pull in the smoke past your throat. A lot of people freak out when they feel that cancer-pillow going down their esophagus and that's when they cough. Not us. So we each took a drag and were practically stoned from the nicotine buzz. **** turned to me and he said, "you know, they say you're addicted after five cigarettes." And I said, "Well, I guess we'll just have to stop at four."

I once rode home from a bar on top of an SUV. Not the whole way, just the last couple of miles. There were five of us. I mean, I thought there were five of us in this Lake Tahoe or Explorer or whatever the hell it was. So the music is blasting and we're all feeling good and I think Foreigner or Rush or something came on and it was all over from there. (I must preface this by saying that the driver was dead sober. SOBER. He didn't have a couple "easy beers" or "social beers" and he wasn't high. That shit isn't noble or necessary, it's stupid.) We're driving along and the song is crazy and guy on the right side of the back sticks his head out the window and lets out a "Whoop!" Then the front-seat passenger does the same. Even the driver starting hooting and hollering. Overcome with the energy in this SUV, I skipped over merely sticking my head out the window and just climbed out and onto the roof. The car/truck/thing had a sun roof that was open so laying on my belly on the top of the car, I stuck my head through the sunlight laughing like an escaped serial killer. And the faces that greeted me were a mixture of shocked and ecstatic and out-of-control. I kept laughing and screaming and dipping my head through the opening while people poked their heads out yelling and spitting and cheering. I rode that car like a magic carpet.

Two friends of mine from Cape Coast, a small city in Ghana, have seen Home Alone. I met these guys on the beach. I had a ring that my sister had given me. I still have it, actually, but I don't really wear it anymore. Still have it, still have it. So I'm on the beach and somewhere this thing has fallen off my finger. It's white sand, it's a huge beach and it's fucking Equator sun bleaching everything except the color of African skin. As I'm looking for this ring, some guys come up and offer to help. Sometimes, when a Ghanaian offers to lend a hand, they want to hear about America or London or New York City. These guys wanted to talk but weren't too agressive about it. After a few minutes, one of them found my ring. I was so happy that when they asked to meet later that night, I said sure. They came to the hostel we ('we' = the eight American students in the city) were staying in and we started talking. Me and these two college-age, college-attending Ghanaians. One of them had seen Home Alone. What the fuck? Really? He liked it a little which I thought was fine. We began to walk around in the street and ****** asked if I wanted to see their dorm. The building they brought me to had open ceilings between every room, exposed stairwells with no railings, columns where one would expect walls and young attractive Ghanaians crawling all over it. It was an Escher painting. I mean literally, it was a fucking Escher painting. So we climb up flight after flight until we reached the roof. *** said come to this side and when I turned a corner, I was looking at the lights of every building in Cape Coast, the road leading out of the city, and the black blanket of the Atlantic Ocean. ****** was training to be an architect. That's what his father did and he wanted to design buildings for Ghana. *** was studying Political Affairs. Both wanted to travel but come back to Ghana bringing back whatever they had learned. Both wanted to have an adventure in a strange place. Both wanted to meet new, heart-deep people. Both were me and I was them and I think all three of us knew it.

I don't wear hipster pants.
I don't play the guitar.
I don't listen to fucking Dave Mathews.
I don't use Facebook for anything other than my band.
I don't text while I'm talking to someone in person.
I don't watch television unless it's a movie or Family Guy.

Sometimes I listen to progressive rock.
Always, I wear my helmet when I ride my bike.
I call my mother four times a week and talk for over an hour at least once every five days.

I'm a nerd. See how I did that?

Sold our Souls, movements I-V

Warm. Comforting, cozy, solid, full, nourishing, healing, enjoyable, smooth and satisfying. My turntable breathes warmth into the music I'm so used to hearing digitally. As the needle rides the roller coaster of sound waves carved into the vinyl, out pours Willy Wonka's chocolate waterfall of music. Delicious.

I love my iPhone, especially with my UE Superfi 4vi headphones. The sound is clear and sharp. But instead of smoothly navigating the hills and valleys of the aforementioned sound waves, the iPhone diligently and methodically ascends and descends stairwells of sonic factories. Not quite delicious, more like efficient.

Interlude: Why did we sell our acoustic integrity for portability?

The irony of my headphones, as well as those of the guy blasting his ears on the subway letting everyone else know exactly what he's listening to, is that in trying to listen to a world of possibility, I cut off the world of reality. I walk around Manhattan and make purchases and work at my desk while using ear buds as Berlin walls between eastern monotony and western musical freedom.

All to frequently, I'm struggling not to go into a tirade over the waste that is a 74 minute CD compared to the easily manageable less-than-43 minutes of a record. MP3 players the size of a pack of cigarettes use electrons to get the music from binary code into sound waves while you run around in circles for over an hour. Record players the size of a pizza box rotate a ten inch disc, scratching it with a diamond-tipped needle while you sit on your couch and listen for just a short while. Since my record player is on my dresser, I have to put away clean laundry like a brain surgeon if I don't want the needle to go ballistic.

Most speakers brag about how close they are to reproducing the exact properties of a real live musician/instrument. But that's only half of the process. If the musician was in your living room, playing a concert, would you walk around busily rearranging your Nicholas Sparks collection? No. Unfortunately, cramming 100 people into my living room probably wouldn't be a very fun Tchaik 6. So at home I listen to vinyl. And at work I listen on my iPhone. And you know what? Vinyl lets you hear the music and MP3 players let you hear the music but neither matter if you're not listening.

Step 2: The Cause

If you've been following along, dear reader, there were three steps. There's always three. The first and the third are self-explanatory. This is about the second one.

To prepare for my motorcycle permit test, I watched a bunch of motorcycle crashes on YouTube. They were obviously terrifying but not because I was watching with tensed muscles and frightened teeth. They were scary because I felt my role as the subject of the video was unavoidable. Not the crashing part; the riding part. If you knew that the possibility of a fatal collision was a near certainty and all you have to do to avoid this danger is stay off the bike, you would have to have a tremendous purpose for getting on the fuckin thing. Let's take a tour, shall we?

Although I'm mildly obsessed with death, I don't have a death wish. It comes up a lot when I write and it sobers me when I take a step back and look around. But I don't want to die on a motorcycle - I don't want to die at all. Not right now.

Maybe then, it's the adrenaline. Near death! I've never been an adrenaline junky although I enjoy the elation of rock climbing, cycling through New York City and traveling to Africa. No, it's not for thrills.

Crotch-rocket. When I think of rockets, I think of the dandruff that falls off a phallus in Cape Canaveral. When I think of crotches, I think of baseball, athletic cups and stink. That one's not for me.

Old bikes? nope. (but maybe)

Big bikes? nope. (but purpose will come up later)

Maybe it's working on the bike. (we're getting closer)

Scooters? Helllll no. (I might not want the 2100cc Harley Tour-master but I'm not riding a fucking mo-ped.)

When I work on my bicycle, the only satisfying part is cleaning and tuning the simplest, strongest, purpose-driven gems. The cassette on my back wheel is fantastic. It does one thing and it does it really really well. Cleaning the grease and dirt off it so that it'll snuggle up with my chain silently... it's magic. It's pure! The rest of the bike maintenance is an exercise in self-control. All the rusted/plastic pieces of shit that shipped with it eight years ago should have died on the idea-table and I have to stop myself from setting the whole thing on fire. So why should I even bother trying to clean something that came out of a suck-fest factory 6000 miles away? It barely makes a difference in the ride and it's going to deteriorate and break no matter what I do to it. But the cassette... Oh the cassette. Rock and roll.

I don't love fixing things unless they are simple, elegant and smart. One purpose, built well. Bicycles can facilitate shifty parts living next to solid ones. Motorcycles don't have that luxury. I wouldn't straddle my refrigerator-with-wheels doing 65mph down a highway unless I was confident in all of the parts that make it run. This is my long-winded way of saying that fixing and taking care of a motorcycle is part of the appeal. Lots of smart, well-built little parts working in harmony, like a band. Yeah, fix it up. Take care of it. Pure. Simple.

Alright, enough is enough. I'll just say why I want to ride a motorcycle so badly:

I want to cruise.

I don't need to ride 100 miles an hour. I don't care about flashy plastic all over my wheels. I don't plan on joining a gang or spending every second working on my bike (although there will be a fair amount of tinkering). Mostly, I just want to roll on the throttle and move through space. Like a dog out a window. They're practically asleep. I just want to cruise.

Cowboy of Yellow

I've done so so many stupid things. There are moments I look back on: experiences drinking too much, where I ran out of gas, out of money, out of friends and I thank God that I'm alive. And yet, like a lot of other people, I come up with totally new ways of being ludicrously stupid on an almost daily basis.

I hate the subway. Well, that's not exactly true. I hate the morning commute on the subway. You gotta walk fifteen minutes to get to a train, wait ten minutes because you just missed the last one, ride next to shit-stink people, stand next to annoying people, listen to cell-phone people, push up against unpleasant people. And then you switch trains! Your packed like cattle. Angry, intelligent stupid cattle. And I love the motherfucker who reads his paper all over the place despite the train-car being packed with 150 people. My friend Chris times his departure from his apartment so that he gets to the train (which follows a schedule, believe it or not) exactly when it arrives. Otherwise he sweats on the platform before he's even riding down to work. So yeah, that's awesome.

When it's not the morning commute (6 train), the subway is a gift from the heavens. Gets you where you wanna go faster than a car and costs relatively little (despite recent fare increases). Breathe in, turn on the music, open your book; you're in a vast field surrounded by mountains. Sort of. I ride my bike every single day, rain or shine. My boss says the 'rain' part is a big statement about how badly I want to avoid the subway. With the exception of the 2nd Avenue gauntlet, I ride across different streets every day to and from home. New smells, people and stores abound. Freedom of the human machine supplemented by near-perfect design. I have clothes at work, will wrap my wallet and phone in a plastic bag if it's pouring, and I get to work in half the time that it would take via subway.

Cabs are cows. That includes the slow, stupid ones. That includes the poisoned dangerous ones. That includes the rabid ones. As we all stampede down second avenue, they stay in line for the most part and you can accurately see how they're going to move and where they want to go. Occasionally, you get the random bull who jets across packed lanes. I push next to them, herding them, racing in between them. When you're all moving forty miles an hour (the fastest my bike can pedal in the highest gear), you all think you're not moving at all because you're staying in one place relative to each other. You forget you're doing forty until something gets in the way doing zero.

So stupid. Oil spills, pedestrians, potholes, mechanical explosion. Like horse-flies, they're all right there, buzzing around in the three inches between me and the taxi next to me as we jockey for the lead. Did you know that in New York City, a bicycle is entitled to an entire lane of traffic? That's true! HAHAHAHAHAHA. So fucking stupid.

And tomorrow,

I will do the same thing.

Because I,

am a Cowboy of Yellow.

Too Funny Not to Post

A friend of mine is coming to New York this weekend. I wrote him the following email:

I think you're staying for the whole weekend...

I think you're not running off to hang with a billion other people in NYC...

Thus, I think WE should go to the Astoria Beer Garden on Saturday for sausage and Belgium's finest brews. Sound alright?

On a serious note, if you are meeting up with other people, that's totally cool - feel free to use me and my apt as a home base for all your New York adventures. See you in a few days, brotha.

And he wrote back:

Dude, had I planned on seeing other people, I think the sound of an Astoria Beer Garden for sausages and Belgium beer is enough to blow of my appointment I had with Hilary Clinton. That sounds awesome.

I didn't really have any plans to see other people. I have a bunch of "acquaintances" in NYC, people from college that I was "friends" with, but no one I am itching to see. I may shoot a couple people an email and let them know where in the city I'll be in case they want to meet up, but I'm not going to crash and dash. I was thinking of staying thru Sunday, probably leaving sometime in the afternoon/early evening. Other than that, I'm totally free if you want to take me to other incredibly awesome male events that may or may not include beer, meat, naked women, and non-dance clubs while I'm there (male events to exclude would be the statue of liberty, times square, the empire state building, and any club where I need to take ecstasy to fit in). Looking forward to it!

Everytime I read this, I laugh harder and harder.

Three from Westport

1 - Much needed fun.

2 - An unanticipated reevaluation of priorities and goals. Normally, I talk about reset buttons and go real fluffy but this was quite literal. I realized I have to stop spending all my money and get out of debt. In fact, I have a three step plan: Step 1, get out of debt. Step 2, get a motorcycle. Step 3, follow Ilana around. Talk about literal, that's the first time in this blog that I've mentioned her by name. Weeeeee! The corollary to the three step plan is to see what the wind-up does. We've got a record coming out that we're all extremely proud of. It's a very very cool thing. So if that takes off, amen. If not, see the three step plan above.

3 - Tons of music ideas for Big Show 2009 and a great hand over hand way of making those ideas reality. Giddyup.