LA FIN DU MONDE

On February 6, a tenant of Forest Arms Apartments set what grew into a five alarm fire, resulting in at least 100 people without a home. Among the casualties was Brad Hales' record store, Peoples Records, which wasn't touched by the fire but drowned by the thousands-and-thousands of gallons of water pumped into the building.

Brad sent out a message on Friday, the 22nd, saying he would finally be allowed into Forest Arms on Saturday to salvage what remained and needed help. Around 4pm on the 23rd, Aaron and I split for Detroit in our nastiest duds.

Despite an entire youth spent exploring abandoned houses and burnt out buildings, Forest Arms, and especially Peoples, was nothing like I expected. The effects of the blaze were still fresh: pieces of the building were falling on workers outside, all windows had been boarded up, and water was in EVERYTHING. Still, it didn't occur to me that we'd be working in complete darkness until I walked into the store.

Shortly before we left, I watched a photo slideshow of Peoples' history. Just before the fire, the store was at its best, looking like the warmest, most beautiful spot in the world with immaculate handpainted 45 boxes, records everywhere, and Brad's endlessly positive vibes. Now, it looked like the musty, unoccupied Detroit basement room Brad moved into several years ago.

Along with about ten other fellows, Aaron and I helped to gut Peoples among standing water, black debris, and lots of smells. Half the stock, maybe less, was so damaged it had to be thrown into stacks for later trashing. When we gave up for lack of daylight around 6 or 7pm, we'd almost emptied one of the two main rooms of the store and stacked several thousand soggy or frozen LPs against two walls. Aaron and I followed Brad back to his house where we loaded into his basement everything that had been excavated from the store.

Brad remained incredibly positive throughout the day. Earlier, holding a particularly pathetic water-logged copy of Pharoah Sanders 1977 album Love Will Find A Way, he said "That's ten less copies of this record in the world." When the other workers slagged the album, Brad laughed and said, "Oh, I really like it!" Holding up another sopping record, he said, "Isn't life funny? When this happened, that's all I could think: life is funny."

In other news, my current favorite record label has a myspace page.

BORN BAD

The weekend was looking hectic. That is, to put it lightly. At 1pm, the day after Valentine's, Erin and I were standing in a Kalamazoo courthouse awaiting the short and incredibly sweet ceremony that would wed one of my oldest and closest friends, Jessica, to her man of the last several years. Immediately following the ceremony, we booked back to the married couple's house and imbibed for a few hours with their very nice (and often outright hilarious) families and friends before heading back to Ann Arbor for what would be a sleepless few days.

Back at the house, Brian was hosting a get-together raucous enough to contend with a party made up of four times the attendees. I half-participated in the good times while ripping countless CDs to Erin's laptop as she did some final packing. By 4am, we were the last ones standing and a bit haggard from the events. We snuck in about an hour or two of light sleep alternated with lovemaking, ran some errands after 9am, and left for the airport around 11am. The rest of the details I'll cherish for myself, thanks.

Afterward, I snuck in an hour of sleep and a cup of yogurt before DJing a prohibition-themed 6-hour party with Aaron. The crowd was primarily writers in their late-20s and early-30s, mostly into late-50s and early-60s rock & roll, sipping on Manhattans and gin martinis. A small group spent the last half hour of the night listening to someone's iPod in another space upstairs, which ACL may have taken as more of a "fuck you" than I. We DJed the Monday afterward too. That it was snowing sideways didn't affect the turnout all that much.

It's strange to come home to an empty bed. There is less beauty in this life without Erin. Still, we've been managing, even having fun, writing and chatting online every day. It's more bearable than we expected but I'm dying to see her. Paris seems like it would be nice too. (Sarcasm! - ed.)

GREENER GRASS

Erin's departure is about four short days away. We've been revisiting old haunts and going out a lot, reacquainting ourselves with our beginnings, albeit minus the criminal whiskey intake. It's been a dense week of seeing movies, eating out, visiting museums, and taking long drives into rural Michigan. Strangely, I've found myself reminiscing positively about Ypsilanti. It can be said without too hesitation that living in Ypsilanti was the pits until Erin & I started dating. It felt as though I was constantly fighting for air among the people I lived with, whether it was one person or more. [Brendan would be excluded from that last statement as it was enjoyable when just he and I were roommates.] When she and I got together, the world I anxiously dreamed of in my younger days was a reality.

The basement is looking pretty great and moving into it doesn't seem too crazy. It's a relatively large room and the bed, couch, and computers can most likely all fit in there. I'll split rent with the person that moves into the room Erin & I share and pay off my part long before I take off for France myself. To sweeten the pot for the others living in the house, I'll remove the chore system and clean the house every week myself.

In and of itself, change can be evolutionary or revolutionary and I've got a hunger for the former. The latter tends not to stick anyway. Let's hope the next several months yields dividends.

TRAPPY

Detroit may be of a beautiful decay but the breaks are rough: Brad Hales' record shop was destroyed days ago when another tenant of the same building chose to barricade and torch his room rather than comply with an eviction. Although People's Records wasn't directly affected by the blaze, it's on the bottom of the building and five departments hosed the place down. The water was about four feet deep when Brad was finally allowed in. About 100 tenants are now homeless and Brad's opening shop in his basement.

Speaking of basements, I just reached my saturation point cleaning ours. The upstairs "living room" Erin and I rent will be sublet (subletted?) to a friend when she leaves for France. A few hours of moving boxes from that room and into an increasingly congested area has me a little overwhelmed. I was considering moving into the basement and subletting our current bedroom in an attempt to save money but have to mull it over a bit more. Discovering the source of a rusty stain creeping across the floor was a little disappointing: the drip that spawned it took a detour through a couple boxes of comic books. Hopefully they can be salvaged and sold for Paris rendezvous money. Selling most of my possessions would be ideal and would help to make a move less encumbered by crap that much more a reality. Still, Erin and I own most of the furniture in the house and will eventually have to do something about that. Then again, by the time we return from Paris, it'll all be trash, I'm sure.

God damn, Ann Arbor. You're killing me.

UNDER SYCAMORE TREES

The final episode of Twin Peaks debuted the night before the last day of 5th grade. Is it telling that the scene I remember most is of Audrey Horne cuffing herself to the barred door of a bank vault? Hmm.... Paging Dr. Freud! Now we're onto something! Jimmy Scott's strange voice haunted me for years. If I ever found a singer with such prowess, I'd never go near a microphone again.

HARBOR LIGHTS

I rang in the new year shooting Alligator Gar with a crossbow on a yacht outside of New Orleans with a dildo salesman named Chevy Chase ("We share a name but have never met." Fascinating.). We listened to Herb Alpert, drank awful butt whiskey, and talked about our high school friends. Eventually, I passed out in the ladies' room of the Cat Box after a stirring duet rendition of "Shadow Of Your Smile". By February, I was caught in a game of Lazer Tag with a slave owner. In March, I passed the coiffeur exam in Rinaldo, B.C.

WE'RE HAVING A PARTY OVER HERE!

EVENING NEWS PROGRAM - FEMALE

"No! It's not fair that he-- that he... married that spider lady, with the bondage stuff...."

EARLY SEXUAL HARASSMENT VIDEO (PUBLIC ACCESS) - MALE

"Hey, do you even party?!"

NEWS AT NOON (CANADA) - FEMALE

"The assailant touched his dirty Kid Rock grubbfinger to Ms. Isabelle-Delarue's 'kitty-spot', police said."

EVENING NEWS PROGRAM (CONTEMPORARY) - MALE

"--and and I was like: BING! Can I get a WHAT WHAT?!! Haha--AND MAKE IT OILY!"

WAR PROGRAM ON DEAD SOLDIER - MALE

"He was a Green Beret. His friends thought he looked like Little Richard."

6 O'CLOCK NEWS - MALE

"He ate a chicken nugget. And then the other guy ate a chicken nugget. And then they looked at me like I was a rat. Like I was lower than dirt."

PBS DOCUMENTARY - MALE

"The snake rubs snakesnot on his recent kill."

EVENING NEWS (CONTEMPORARY) - MALE

"Because of his camel spider, the children of the neighborhood teased Dr. Sonderbar, called him a retard and a witch, and tried to burn him on a fire of seasoned oak."

EVENING NEWS - MALE

"WELL WHAT'S IT SUPPOSED TO SMELL LIKE!?!?"

PBS DOCUMENTARY - MALE

"Nope. There has never been a more advanced fish shovel. So make it as oily as you can."

VAMPIRE WEEKEND: WORST BAND EVER

Now, I've thought about this for some time and trust it to be the very truth: I would rather nibble the remains of an apple core protruding from a prostitute's pussy than listen to the entirety of Vampire Weekend's debut. They make me hate pop music and New York City as an idea. I like to think my cynicism is not a brand devoid of hope, but this old world is in a terrible condition and these criminals get me scrambling for a bottle of the strong stuff and an Arvo Pärt disc every time.

Geezus... in the span of writing that last paragraph, two people asked my opinion on Vampire Weekend. What goes on?

EDITORS' WINTER

I ran into one of the Dabenport fellows the other day. The first thing he said: "So, are you putting out the new Dabenport album?" Hm... the subject came up a couple times with other members but it slipped to the back of my mind. Last I'd heard, kinda'-fancy-at-the-time local label Audiopants offered to put it out and went so far as to list them on the roster of their out-dated website ("we will be back winter 2006"). So, I'm intrigued although I don't want to spread myself too thin what with many projects looming on the horizon. Putting together their first album was a weird task. To save money, each part of the physical CD -- cover, cover printing, CD duplication, and insert printing -- was done by a different company and I assembled each disc myself. It came together pretty well and working with John Porcellino was a dream come true. It just occurred to me that I haven't yet put it on iTunes. Haha.

Early last night, ENB and I attended a Scotch tasting hosted by a fellow we buy smoked salmon from. He supplied not only a great number of wildly delicious fish appetizers but also 20 or so bottles of fine Scotch. I sampled about 7 of the Scotches, most of which were truly unruly. I regret not writing down any names but I can't imagine a time when I'll have an extra $60 lying around to pick up a bottle. ACL stopped in for a hot minute and split around the time the (::cough::) alternative a capella group started in on a Puddle Of Mudd song. If you ask me, the bagpipers stole the show.

ENB bought me a subscription to Open City for x-mas. Those books provide a lot of revisits and pleasure. With that and the Brent Van Daley book finally coming together, the writing bug bit me and some ideas are coming together for a story about the "coke mines of France".

RAVENS

Raven feathers and their feces, often referred to as "corn nuts," can be boiled into a dirty broth unsuitable for drinking.

Ravens will eat almost anything. I even saw a raven eat another raven. I can imagine a raven would eat the toes of a child, the filthy creature.

With a rapid staccato pecking, ravens can remove the eyeballs of a dog in a matter of moments. A moment can be almost any length of time but what is a moment to a raven? I imagine it must be very short, almost nothing.

About ten inches larger than a crow, ravens are an average of 27 inches in length, about the same size of some non-flying common house cats and a large knife my stepfather used to wield before my sisters and I at night during times both sober and drunk. Often referred to as the "lindbergh baby of the bird world" because they are so often kidnapped and held for ransom then found in the woods with bludgeoned skulls, ravens are coincidentally the same length as Charles A. Lindbergh III, son of famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh II.

Often confused as the same bird, crows and ravens are in reality quite different. While growing up, crow's are often treated better, receiving decadent gifts from their parents like leather penny
loafers, and fur coats and flashy jackets as opposed to the denim jean vests ravens are often seen in.

Ravens can be seen all over the globe in areas like arctic islands and north african deserts. They can be found in England, Mexico, Turkey, and sometimes flying around the ceiling of Wal-mart. And one time in my friends house. He was frightened, called me over, and I brought my broom and a squirt gun filled with vinegar.

There are eight species of raven, including the Common raven, the Australian raven, the Forest raven, the Thick-billed raven, the White-necked raven, the VW raven, the Coney Dog raven, and the Sammy Davis Jr. raven named after the popular nightclub singer, Sammy Davis Jr, who was known to vigorously rub a raven wing against his scalp before gigs.

In his book entitled The Bad News Bears, Edgar Allen Poe made multiple references to a rapping raven that played at a club called The Chamber Door. Of course, this was a work of fiction and no such club existed.

Japanese emperors have exalted the raven as a creature of beauty and strength. Excerpted here for you, a 14th century Japanese prayer:
"Oh, raven.
You are so beautiful.
You have such pretty hair.
And your eyes your eyes are
pretty too. Very pretty. You are my pretty,
pretty girl and I want to kiss you all over."

Ravens have amazing eyesight for having only one good eye. Yes, it's true: all ravens are blind in one eye but have extra great hearing in one hear. They can see through almost anything surface or material except for lead, hence the nickname "The Superman of Birds." What a fun fact.

A typical raven weighs less than your average slice of pizza. This was evidenced when at least five, perhaps six ravens, fought over a slice of pizza I threw at them on an unnamed waterfront in the continental United States. It brought delite to my heart to see these creatures wrestle with and ultimately fail to carry away and consume the slice.