Category: Life

Dotty Oliver from the Little Rock Free Press emailed me a couple of weeks ago saying that my “name had come up” as a possible writer for a piece on Max Recordings‘ 5th anniversary. It’s nice to know my name comes up. And this time I’ll get paid! Not much, but enough to say I’m a professional journalist[1].

I put it together in just a few days, and it turned out OK. I think it will be in the racks here soon. So I’ve conquered Arkansas Times, Localist, and now the Freep. Onward to Nightflying.

1.) In the same sense that I’ve been a professsional actor because I’ve been paid to act once.

I’m 30 years old today, and I’m sitting at Jo’s coffeeshop in Austin, Texas by myself at 11AM, and it’s great. The weather is cool and overcast and the people-watching is fantastic. I’m eating a lemon poppyseed muffin, drinking coffee, and I have birds begging me for food.

My associates (4 girls) are still asleep after a long night of partying like rock stars with semi-rockstars, or at least a band. They got in around 5AM. I didn’t go out last night; I still have a cold and I wanted to take it easy. My body definitely would not have been able to withstand the evening the girls had. I stayed in and watched Secretary on Oxygen while sending text messages to Katherine, who was watching Almost Famous. By complete coincidence we were watching one of each others’ favorite films. All the more tragic was the fact that she was most likely NOT watching the Director’s Cut, and I was watching an edited version with commercials.

Yesterday I saw The Go! Team, Of Montreal, and The Black Heart Procession. Sadly I missed Mr. Lif, Blackalicious and Spoon (and Echo and the Bunnymen), but hey that’s how it goes around here – you grab the gusto you can. There’s a lot to be had. Tonight hopefully I’ll catch up with my only essentials for this year’s SXSW – The Soft.Lightes and Animal Collective. And maybe, just maybe, I might run into Jellyfish’s Roger Manning.

So. 30. I wish I could say I have some big roiling, revelatory spiel about the pseudo-significance of this particular mileage turnover, but I don’t. I don’t think it’s going to alter the way I act or think. I made a decision long ago to avoid being a grownup in the standard sense. I really haven’t changed much since I was 14, and I don’t think I’m going to start soon.

I know the question on everybody’s mind is, “why hasn’t there been a new plog since December?” Well, I haven’t been taking many pictures, sadly. It’s probably because my battery life is getting so low that I can only take a few pictures at a time. I’ll be sure to get a new battery before next week’s trip to Austin, where I will more than likely take a zillion pictures and post them here or on Flickr while I’m down there. I have to admit, the ease of use and popularity of Flickr may kill the plog. People who come to my journal barely seem to notice the plog’s existence anyway.  I may start referring to it as Sneaky Photography, because I recently acquired that domain name and pointed it to the plog. I just have to get the link out there.

Some notes from the long icy weekend of staying home:

The DVD commentary by writer/director David O. Russell on I ♥ Huckabees is something I highly recommend. It reminds me of a companion study guide as Russell is given the room to expand on the ideas the film presents. When I first saw the movie, I just enjoyed it as a clever head scratcher, plus I went to a late show and was sleepy at the time. I know my date fell asleep, and I think I may have as well. But after watching it again, I realize it’s a great movie for anyone with an interest in Zen or Existentialism or philosophy in general. It’s a great unpacking of a lot of important concepts for modern, thoughtful living.

I also recommend Kentucky Fried Movie.

Much of my weekend was spent in the music room playing either keyboard or guitar. I plowed through a stack of Guitar One back issues. On the piano I discovered something completely new to me: the black keys spell out an E flat pentatonic minor scale. This means that anything you do will sound cool if you use the E flat key as your tonic. Even better, that black keys are raised, so there’s more lattitude for sloppy playing. This struck me as a tremendous metaphor for music in general: the white keys spell out the traditional C Major/A minor scales that form the basis of European classical music while the black keys spell out the pentatonic scale, the basis for all blues and rock music. Ebony and ivory indeed.

I also got my cool, and apparently rare, Quik Lok tiltable keyboard stand last week. It had been on backorder from Sam Ash for so long I had given up hope of pretending I’m Tom Brislin.

Another pleasant surprise: I never noticed my copy of John Coltrane’s Blue Train had a CD-ROM feature. The bad news: the disc is from the mid-90’s. Meaning it wouldn’t work quite right and I think I accidentally installed Quicktime circa 1997. Oh well, a video and tons of audio interviews will make up for that.

And finally, Bill Graham’s vault. So many vintage posters, t-shirts, and more from the late San Francisco promoter/manager extraordinaire. He is generally credited with inventing the rock concert as we know it, and apparently he was quite the pack rat.  While much of it is super-expensive vintage memorabilia, there are some cool reproduction t-shirts that I’m thinking about getting.

I took Stinkfoot to the vet this morning because his left front paw doesn’t appear to be working. He’s been hobbling around for a few days. The vet gave him a shot and some antibiotics, and said if he doesn’t improve in a couple of days to bring him back for an x-ray. As I was waiting for the bill I heard a couple of the nurses talking about Valentine’s Day. One of them said, “we don’t do Valentine’s Day. It’s a Hallmark holiday.”

I can see her point. As much as I actually enjoy having a day to spread love around, for those of us who don’t have a significant other it’s a bit depressing. Like Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s, Valentine’s Day is one of those days where single people feel culturally compelled to be doing something special. If we’re not, we’re inevitably depressed. I imagine it’s similar to being a lonely Jew on Christmas.

As a side note, thank heavens for myspace.com, where people can send odd pictures and leave notes for people rather than buy cards or even e-cards (good ones are really hard to find) for Valentine’s Day.

All week I kept getting these MSN Messenger requests from people I don’t know, so I emailed them asking who they are and how they know me. This was one reply:

“oh im on jessica dycks and taylor bents and allie jones’s hockey team. ur also none as “yellow shirt kid ” ur the boy that my hole team knows about”

Good to know.