THE MEDIUM SLEEP

Anxious for a walk, the dog woke him at 2AM. The ghost of her laptop was present, looming heavy in the room. Having swallowed the last of the evening's gin, he rose and pulled a pair of trousers from the mass next to the bed. Four hits of acid wrapped in a Hot Dog Beetle receipt fell to the floor. After purchasing the acid from his brother four months ago, they were saved for a special occasion and eventually forgotten. He tried to remember the first time he dropped acid but was unable. This lack of recollection negated a shared experience with many of his peers; how many parties would he attend, sitting through anecdote after anecdote, before he created one of his own?

Then he wondered how many of his peers were lying about their first time. And if they'd even had a first time. How would he know? If worse came to worse, he could talk about tonight. The trip:

the dog threw up on the sidewalk
it was a Pagan Holiday
it was a thriving moustache river

FOUND FOOTAGE

He was a Ghetto Mister with a fancy pimpstick. One couldn't help but notice how his shoes shined. He could have a doctorate in one phone call. And widows loved him. "A widow will make you breakfast in her husband's robe," he told a group of kids.

THE CIRCULAR RUINS

What a sight it must have been for my neighbors back on Garland Street: eyes rolled back in my skull, heaving hot dogs and Doritos at the base of my mailbox while my ex yells at me to come inside and brush my teeth because it's 3AM and we both have to work the next day. "Just bring me a pillow!" I holler and someone does. The story doesn't quite end there but I couldn't say what happened since the next thing I remember was waking up around noon. It was a gorgeous Spring day outside, I was in my boxers, and the bedsheets never felt cleaner. How I undressed myself and got in bed I don't know, but I felt surprisingly great.

So goes my first blackout! Later that day, my stomach boiled from the heat but the morning after still has a place as one of the most beautiful waking experiences of my life. It wasn't deserved after a night of such abuse: I later learned that I laid out a friend by socking him in the jaw on the way home from the bar. I also pissed on people's lawns, climbed buildings I didn't own, woke random friends up to party (all declined), and danced while my pals placed orange road construction barrels at the front doors of an entire neighborhood of houses. This only comes to mind because I've been completely sober for 11 or so days and every morning has been rrrrrough stuff.

THERE ARE POWERS, THERE ARE HAUNTINGS

Update! HC still reigns but not without its foibles: thanks to the internet (and Punk Not Profit in particular), Void's unreleased Touch & Go album, Potion For Bad Dreams, was pretty easy to track down. Unfortunately, after a couple listens, Potion has been relegated back to obscurity; Potion For A Not-So-Great Album is more like it (nyuk nyuk). However, a proper rip of the Condensed Flesh boot more than made up for it. Corey D. hooked me up with the Wrangler Brutes cassette which I was pleased to find ISN'T the lo-fi live tape I believed their debut to be. It should prove a nice addition to the double-cassette HC mix I'm preparing for the trip abroad (180 minutes of the fuckin' truth!).

Although not far from the hardcore/punk family tree, Black Eyes and Mi Ami have been pulling me out of the 1980s and back to earth. So few bands/musicians grab me out of the gate with their lyrics and Black Eyes was able to do so despite singing in a near-unintelligible bark & yelp (look no further than "A Pack Of Wolves" for a totally ON condemnation of boy stupidity). At the moment tho', I'm preparing for a recording session tomorrow by avoiding music almost completely today as an experiment to keep any influence that might creep into the songs as lean as possible.

By the way, is it possible to call for an embargo on the use of "bro" and "bros"? I'm all for the de- and re-contextualization of words, but can't we find something better? Something, I dunno, not so easy!? C'mon, let's expand the cultural lexicon.

Damn, I gotta' give it up to super-positive Polish jazz violinists that studied with Don Cherry. Here's hoping all that smiling and great energy rubbed off.