BERIMBAU

1.) Though we were warned, I still didn't expect the soreness in my forearm the following day after KH and CL acquired and installed an antique dartboard. We're trying to accustom ourselves to a few hours of throwing a week (although I'm still trying to shake a semi-irrational fear of sharp objects flying head-level). CL told a real cringer of a story about a friend that suffered a "William Burroughs" instead of a "William Tell" in a dart match -- a "Joan Vollmer", I s'pose. Anyway, last night, after getting my ass murdered in the first game, I technically won the second. I say "technically" because I still would have won if the others players hadn't crapped out right before the last round, which they did.

2.) The first night of Bloom with ACL and I running the t-tables had a fair turnout and I couldn't shake what lucky, privileged fellows we are. We DJ finer restaurants on odd nights, play outright strange music, get paid in cash and drink for free. It's fucking insane. Totally insane. This strikes me as so sad to say, but if I had a [working] car and my own set of tables to play out, I'd pursue this crazy fucking gig even harder. If someone's looking to become a benefactor, I'm willing to make them the best possible mixtapes for the rest of my life.

3.) Although "Xangô" was the track that broke my brain on Baden Powell, "Berimbau" is equally beautiful. It's stark and very solitary feeling, something you'd play to yourself, alone at home. It was late one night a couple years ago when Luiz Bonfá's "Manhã de Carnaval" came on the radio. The woman's voice still sounds like a trumpet, powerful and brassy, and it'll never leave me. The film soundtrack it came from, Black Orpheus, is a bit of a difficult listen -- the fidelity is surprisingly low, there's a lot of background noise from the film -- but it's an incredibly rewarding album. In terms of structure and variation of themes, it's perfect. I'm beginning to believe that the best albums are thematic and repetitious in nature. If a piece is strong enough, the variations can serve as the studying and revisiting of the original. The depth gained will be a great reward.

SHE'S MY WOLF

you let the dog taste blood
endless!

AUSTIN BY WAY OF WACO

I had a shaman
and nothing could stop
his form from shaking
horrors were manifesting
and the hours were sinking.

NEVER REALLY BEEN DOWN WITH SOMEONE

"You see, the ass is just an extension of that strange pussy."

Louis rolled a Zig-Zag around a filter, stuffed it with a brown moss and flicked it at the first woman. She lit the joint and held it like a cigarette, leaning into the second woman as she dragged. The bed sank in deep and unnaturally under their weight. There, in that spot below, the box spring was bent and ruined. It occurred to me only then that Louis must have hammered away between 1000 pairs of rosy thighs on this bed.

"It's one big organ... organism...." He snickered and trailed off. "Do you want to lose that cape? I'll trade you. I'll make it a nice trade." He placed his left hand middle finger between his lips and sucked the shake off like it was sugar. He smiled wide and pointed at my shoulders. "You can make another cape."

"No thanks," I said. "She and I fell in love making my costume." Sharon and I took a big hit and waved goodbye to the ladies. You could smell the room turning horny.

As we stepped into the hallway, Louis tugged at my cape. Turning back, he clasped my shoulders and started kneading. He smiled again and focused.

"They like your mask." He squinted back over his shoulder at the crimped blonds.

In the half hour spent scoring from Louis, the snow began falling and the sidewalks were perfect: not a single footprint. Stepping from the stairs and onto the concrete, we each felt a blood rush and began laughing. Heat crawled up from the Lycra and over my neck, pins & needles covering my scalp. Underneath the mask, my hair stood on end as I recalled one night we slept on a mattress and box spring with no frame. We woke to eat a tube of Pringles, still faded from the moss. The next day, we took pictures of your pregnant belly and your water broke in the bathtub.

DAMELO BABY

Feeling completely burnt out by the holidays, I was apprehensive to begin a three-week tenure DJing for Aaron while he gallivants around Argentina with his girlfriend. Still, I hate to say 'no' to opportunities, especially those opportunities that pay and/or offer free food and wine.

On the first night, my game was off: it had been a while since I DJed and the effects of working a holiday retail job every day for a few weeks were exacerbated by a lack of sleep, food, and water. On top of some heinous mixer issues, some visiting friends were visibly bothered for the better part of the night which put a slight damper on the mood. Not long after midnight, I was more than happy to scramble home with said friends where could all relax. About ten people were over but I didn't last long in my condition and soon passed out.

Last night was a far cry from last week. My set went very well, the highlights being a long section of soul/cosmic/jazz kind of stuff made possible by the addition of a crate of Aaron's records and playing out Rota and Badalamenti tracks for the first time. Actually, before I played the latter artists, a patron complimented my choices by saying the music made him feel like he was "living in a Cassavetes film" (I think he may have been mistaken with his director choice but whatevs; I'll accept it). It was an incredibly reassuring night.

So, I'm back to work on my mix after a short and unplanned hiatus. For a portion of last night, I almost directly mimicked live the work I've done so far to great results. I've got two more dates this month and much to look forward to.

SKETCHES

Shawn slid down the roof's incline with trumpet under arm, landing in the dark murk below. Stuck and sinking deep into the brown mass, he began playing a melody from Concierto de Aranjuez. He had felt blocked for some time -- blocked from new melodies and ideas -- and he began to feel open. Still, he sank.

FOR PAUL REUBENS

The unhinged peculiarity of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure was staggering(!) upon recent viewing. How long had it been? Five years? Ten years since I'd seen it last? Unlike certain movies associated with childhood that would yield disastrous viewings (I'm looking at you Garbage Pail Kids), Big Adventure held its own. The breadth of the Adventure is wild and I'd most certainly argue its merits to any disbeliever. Although it doesn't exactly strike me as a kids movie, I should thank my folks for letting me watch it in the 1980s. Shortly after becoming reacquainted with the film, BTH purchased the entire Pee-Wee's Playhouse series on DVD, which I should perhaps thank God for. Worth at least its weight in gold if distributed across a dozen or so VHS tapes, Pee-Wee & Ms. Yvonne's Puppet Dance, along with Gary Panter's brilliant set design, was the cinch.

Admittedly, I'm pretty far removed from parenting and, well, children, but if the continuing homogenization of culture is any indicator, I would assume there's not a show quite like Pee-Wee's on television now. What I do come into contact with -- mostly clothing commercials and neighborhood kids -- leaves me with a feeling of deep disappointment and detachment from my own childhood. Please, parents: stop buying Starter jackets for your nerdy kids. Don't force your children to become tiny adults with credit cards and cell phones. If I have kids, I hope to teach them focus and discipline, but I want their imaginations to run wild. They should know, deeply, that anything is possible and anyone who disagrees is very sadly mistaken.

2008 will be the year I begin subscribing to Esquire. My last entry was to be about drawing a line from my ideals as a teenager to the person I am now. It proved difficult and while I may return to that idea at some point, it's in the distance. My late teens and early 20s were characterized by a loosening of persona and the self. When I started to reel myself back in, I was very much the same person I've always been (the one who got confused in the "looseness") and someone a little different. In a very small way, subscribing to Esquire represents the latter. [Maybe using the phrase "a magazine like Esquire" is a bad way of saying that I was ignorant in youth as to the difference between Maxim and Playboy and Esquire. For the record, Maxim is really dumb plus half-naked women, Playboy is less dumb and has a kind of "cursory intelligence" -- that is, it feigns an air of sophistication -- plus naked women, and Esquire is intelligent plus mostly clothed women.] Why subscribing to a magazine means anything, I don't know. I suppose it's because I based a lot of my personality on my friends in certain ways and I can't picture any of my longtime friends reading Esquire. But then, this is becoming a continuation of something I started on a few posts back.

ESPECIALLY FOR YOU

In 1997, at a VFW show in Port Huron Township, an exuberant crowd of underage drinkers gave my "No Alcohol" show policy a complete 180. This crowd was not the same indifferent crowd that came to see my band. No, these kids belonged to Neighborhood Funk Posse, an ill-named
local band that achieved legendary status despite being absolutely terrible.

I'd mistakenly thought all the excitement was indicative of a loyal fanbase and not the excessive consumption of PBR and Labatt Blue (from the can, of course!). With the prohibition lifted, a change was expected but never occurred. Somehow, in the ten years since, it's only recently occurred to me that my band sucked.

My bandmates didn't like our band. Not wanting to practice, record, or own anything we released, they politely humored me as if I were the autistic leader of a Butthole Surfers cover band. Thanks, fellas! Butcouldn't you have sent me a memo?

At a Labor Day party on some swank estate a few years back, during the middle of a conversation about something else entirely, a grown man said, "I was too weird for my punk band. I was always trying to throw in an extra little beat on each riff -- an extra little AH! -- and they kicked me out." I wanted to say, 'No, they kicked out because you have a personality disorder.' Instead, I held my tongue because no one told me.

REQUIA / DAYS HAVE GONE BY

Perhaps I mentioned my shrinking brain. The fade will erode my short term memory, speech, and mood if I'm not careful but a few weeks away is usually enough for my brain to recuperate. Just as I decided to abstain, the Soul Club anniversary popped up along with the Heavy Manners debut, both of which provided numerous opportunities for the fade. The Soul Club on Friday was tops -- 230+ people -- and Fine Wine's r&b set was the whip. Around midnight, Aaron, myself and a few others went out back to smoke when an attendee from the E-Sham show earlier in the night found us and wanted to partake. I said, "Great -- the undercover cop is here." I knew I was mistaken when he asked if any of us were into punk rock and started pumping his fists in the air. Back inside, Robert was dancing with a honey and looking very happy. That was the affirmation I was looking for -- that this was indeed a celebration, his success, and the acme of the night. By 2am, I was anxious to crawl into bed with Erin.

Saturday started off with a very necessary salmon purchase, was detoured by a 2 hour nap, and capped by the inaugural Heavy Manners -- A2's first ongoing benefit dance party. There wasn't much advance word so it was sparsely attended but very relaxed. Robert and I met up beforehand and spent the majority of the night chatting with folks until Aaron showed, at which point we started dancing. Back at my house, Brian's friends had their own little party going and we joined in. Eventually, it was 4am, we'd watched 45 minutes of Night of the Bloody Apes, and Sunday morning was going to be rough.

BAD TIMING

In a May 2001 interview, artist Dan Clowes mentioned Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. Of everything said in the 24-page conversation, this little passage stuck out:

"I thought that was such a great thing in Pale Fire how this unreliable critic who's sort of mis-analyzing this whole epic poem that John Shade has written, is actually creating this whole new work of art that's possibly even superior to this great poem itself."

The concept seemed fantastic but I never picked up the novel or read much else about it (I guess I had better things to do at the time like get divorced). Over time, I forgot about this "John Shade" character and developed the idea that the book was comprised of a poem by Nabokov and a wild analysis written by his neighbor. Pale Fire came up in conversation with RSW, who often recommends the book to people and said he'd lend me his copy. On the back, John Updike dishes praise saying Nabokov writes prose "the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." With my misconstrued idea and Updike's quote, I began to read the book as if it were a serious and impassioned analysis by Nabokov's neighbor. It made no sense so I researched the book a bit. Re-reading the forward, it was apparent how badly I mis-read it and how fucking funny the book might be.

I've been desperate for a book to dive into as I was getting faded just about every day for a spell there and my brain was starting to shrink