the record-on-the-fly home studio is a bit closer to perfection. it’s so much easier to write when i can just turn on, press a few buttons and go… it’s really surprising the quality i’m getting using a cheap mic, the RCA outs on my 4 track and sonic foundry’s ACID software. schweet.


congrats to matt for getting a piece in Sweet Fancy Moses… it’s a classic wilson piece, too


hang in there to heather for losing her job because of her blog. i was nearing those same waters a while back, lucky for me i’ve got some very understanding mangagement.


and finally, hi to maurice tierney, editor of dirt rag magazine. he dropped me a line early this week to say thanks for linking to him and asked if he could get a bigger pic of my car for the magazine. double schweet!!

another weekend of manual labor. but for the best reason of all… myself. we got most of the painting done on saturday, then crashed out on the couch to catch the trading spaces marathon on TLC. jack hit the dogpark twice and played with his buddy coleman, so he was sleepy all weekend. good for us.


on to the next task at hand, sanding and painting trim and doors. we do it all surgeon-like with the big ass lead-paint-resistant masks, coz it’s an old house and who knows what’s going on under all that paint. i gotta get a picture of us up here, it’s a sight. bought a sander, kristy had big fun with it all over the closet and guest bedroom doors yesterday, still have a ways to go, though.


my 5-in-1 Tool has become my new best friend.


i’m debating between this reel mower and this one. the germans are superior, you know…

ya know what today is? friday? yup, but it’s also the one year anniversary of blogging. for me, anyway. damn, just ONE year? so damn much has happened, if it weren’t for this journal i don’t think i’d be able to keep track of it. got my own domain, started a band, got married, got a dog, got a house, lost a band. lots and lots of fun times documented in-between. that’s enough life-changing events for a decade, nevermind a year. the best part is that there’s so many ‘gots’ and so few ‘losts’. and between me and ryan, we managed to turn a handful of our friends into compulsive bloggers.


so, if you get a chance, dig into the archives today. maybe check out my first post. embarassing, but that’s what this is all about, right?


here’s to another year of complete nonsense!

well, it’s official now. due to internal issues, sissy|space|sex has broken up. i don’t want to say that saturday’s show did us in, because it’s been brewing for some time. but that crappy-ass night definitely couldn’t have come at a worse time. after some discussion, stacey decided to call it quits. jenn, eric and i were itching for a break anyway, so we’re taking it.


dunno what the future holds, the three of us will probably get back into some noise come summertime… just need some time right now to get my act together.


i’m actually feeling really good about the break-up right now, i’ve been increasingly strapped for time and haven’t really been feeling the love for the band. i think i’m really tired of playing loud music. it was fine when i was a pent-up teenager and into the angsty-early-twenties, but i find that most of the stuff that i really like to listen to is quieter, more melodic. that’s just an idea.


anyway, more time for the wife, dog and house. more time for the bike!

before and after of our ex-pepto bismol pink guest bedroom. and this is just the primer, can’t wait until we put the paint on!



and our hideous blood-red bathroom is now a refreshing clean shantung, thanks mainly to krista and elmer.


i don’t know where we’d be without our knowledgable friends. [i didn't get a pic of krista or gardiner, thanks to them too!]

wow, things go to negative 11 on the music frontier… saturday was one of those experiences that sucks sooo bad that it’s almost one of those ‘character-building’ times that pa always told you about. sissy|space|sex had a show at that eternal pit of hell, cafe tattoo. and i was not too excited about it to begin with. if you recall back, the last time we played at CT, i came down with what turned out to be a 3 month long sinus infection. i swear to god, that place sucks my soul out.


so we hadn’t had many practices with me moving, stacey moving, the practice space moving. everything in flux. i knew we were going to be super sloppy, so my only goal for the night was to drive up, play 1st or 2nd and then make a speedy exit. Alex was nice enough to accompany me up to the depths of enemy-territory (maryland). got there around 8:30, eric ran in to make sure the show was still on (you never know…) and he returned to say “yup, it’s still on. and we got the middle slot of 3 bands”. sometime within the next 10 minutes i hear a wild rumor that there are now 4 bands and we’re playing LAST.. no way that’s true, right? stacey affirms the horrible truth to the rumor and i packed up my gear and went home.


that’s what i shoulda done anyway, instead i just continued loading in in a state of shock. i don’t even think i can go into all the bad things that happened before we went on at around 1:30. here’s a staccato list:

• superADD’d out fred durst jock punk drummer of the Hustlero GTs being such a freak that it stopped being funny after a while and started pissing me off to the point that i had to go outside before i started yelling things and getting into trouble.
  
  
  
• hustlero gt’s amazingly covered everthing that is BAD about rock music. innane, misogynistic, lyrics. feathered hair, boring-ass ‘rockin out’ songs
  
  
  
• the fabulous pasties were decent, if i coulda managed them.. i woulda made the pete townshend lookalike sing all the songs in his countrified-twang and gotten rid of the creedish-bluesy black hole of stage presence that was their lead singer. nice kids though… they asked if i’d like to go back to their place after the show to drink some beers and ’smoke some ganja’. (it always cracks me up when suburban kids refer to pot as ‘ganga’ or ’sensimilia’). i told them i had to go home to my wife and dog.
  
  
  
• i don’t even know where to begin with “the cottonmouth band”. i’ll post some pictures tomorrow, but imagine a 50s-ish grey haired hells angel, and a band full of your standard Mars music employees playing early Allman Bros-inspired stuff that’ll get you close. truly bizarre, very real. i felt like i was in Roadhouse and Jeff Healey was up next.

okay that brings me up to us. playing last. been there for 5 hours getting more and more pissed off. first song, my amp starts emitting a banshee wail that would make mariah carey jealous. of course, i assumed that it was PA feedback, so i’m the asshole waiting for mr sound to fix it. sheepishly, i pulled the plug on myself and it finally stopped. the hells angel from TCB (oh shit, i wonder if they realize that…) let me borrow his little carvin amp, which sounded fine for them but was a quiet, tinny mess when i used it.


having a hard enough time without my amp, then waiting for 5 hours to play to 8 drunks from the previous 3 bands, the demon cafetattoo swooped in and dealt a final blow. my voice went. miserable, squeaky, and pissed off… we played an abbreviated set. alex and i threw all my gear in my car and we got the f out of maryland as fast as we could.


at this point, i’m not so excited to be in a band anymore.

Driver Who Mowed Down 19 Returned to Hit 7, Police Say


“The underlying motive is he just hates people.” [via: TMN]

spend mosta yesterday whipping up this little valentine game for a company emailing… dorky fun


there’s not much better way to start a friday than to cue up a couple hours’ worth of Avalanches and just riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide…


left jack in the basement while i took the mrs out to v-dinner at Konami and the little bugger ate a HOLE in the carpet! i was looking forward to un-crate training him and letting him roam about the house when we’re not home, but he’s gonna be living the caged life for a while longer. woke up this morning and stepped in something cold, wet and nasty on the stairs. no, it wasn’t his corpse [do not pass go, go directly to hell...], but i found the eaten carpet in 2 big chunks.. ugh. helluva way to wake up.

heh, my Keepsake review seems to have pissed someone off… i love it!

glad to see that life is getting back to normal. a happy suburban doldrum lies in wait. mama, i’m coming home! daily jack’s getting back to the ‘daily’ status…


jack’s found a friend named coleman. he’s a 4 yr old black lab that lives in the court behind ours. they get to play together pretty much every day. jack’s learning colman’s off-leash good behavior so well that when i walk him at lunch i let him off the leash by himself and we play some serious fetch. much fun. he’s very, very happy in his new house and in his new backyard. it’s soooo nice just to walk downstairs, open the door and send him out into the yard to do his business by himself. especially when it’s chilly-willy.


spent all last weekend playing mr home improvement. we got the two disgustingly colored (pepto bismol pink and dark grey green) rooms as well as the guest bathroom (blood-curdling deep maroon) all primered up and ready for some non-stomach-turning colors. did the living room ceiling too, my neck hurt. our painting crew gets massive shouts too… bustin’ forth some serious k-nowledge. so far, i’ve installed a new phone jack and replaced a broken garbage disposal. i am sooooo mr fixit!


going up to baltimore again this saturday with sissy|space|sex. gots a show with some folks we don’t know called cottonmouth. i’m going to try to spend as little time as possible in the club coz last time i was there i came down with a 4 month long sinus infection. cafe tattoo is the plague! unclean!


i think i’ve come up with the cable loophole. here’s what’s goin’ down with me.. signed up for the ‘limited’ cable service for a couple years. that’s like $13 for yr basic channels and some other misc crap. when i switched addys to the townhouse, i called up the cable co. and they had a package where, if i rented a cable box and got free showtime for 6 months, the installation would be $25 instead of the $80 for tv and modem. cool. the cable guy gave me a digital cable box instead of the normal analog box and voila! i have somewhere around 200 channels! and as far as i know, i’m only paying the $13 plus $5 for the box. stick it to the cable man!


oh, one more thing… i’m psyched up about this MTBR gathering in Davis, WV this summer. 3 days of muddy biking in the canaan valley? i’m VERY there. used to go there every summer to race motorcycles in the blackwater 100. it’s a really incredible area, the land that time forgot… ok. ’nuff for now.