Small Man, Big Mouth

One Year Later

2009-03-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

For the record:

1) I am not dead:

2) There was a beautiful girl serving soft-serve frozen yogurt at Penguins tonight.

3) LeBron James commands hefty amounts of my daydream time.

4) Bean and cheese burritos are $2.99 at Fresh & Easy.

5) Hayden is alive and the others are growing:

6) "Messy, Isn't It?" is nearly complete and will be recorded (very) soon.

7) Been drinking Pomegranate 7-Up lately:

8) Obama is not black. He is half-black.

9) My glasses were eaten off my face by a child I work with.

10) Have been vegetarian for 9 months.

I got a new:

2008-02-16T01:31:00.000-08:00

a) pair of jeans
b) sweet job
c) awesome place to live
d) engrossing book
e) pair of soccer cleats:

f) new niece on the way!

al

Mamiya Summer 2007

2008-01-02T02:10:00.000-08:00

While I try to scrounge up some money to pay for the "nice" European pictures to get developed and processed, I figured I'd put up some pictures of last summer. I took the pictures with my Mamiya 6. It is a great medium format camera that I purchased after my Canon AE-1 was lost on a BART train in San Francisco. Most of the pictures come from the DANGERS tour we did last summer. Some are from Princeton while I was staying with Tim and some are from our road trip back across the United States. My plan is to print most of these large (20x20 inches) and put them up in my new apartment. I hope you enjoy them.

I Went To Europe (and Morocco)

2007-12-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hi. I guess it's been a while since I did any of this communal computer stuff. However, now seems to be the appropriate time to get reacquainted with sharing my silly life with other humans. Why? you may ask. Because: I went to Europe.

I am going to put these photographs up in two batches. The first will be all the touristy stuff taken with my digital camera. Me with the donkey. Me with the church. Me with the Mona Lisa. Me, me, me. Watch me grow and age and gain interesting amounts of hair as my surroundings morph from warm and Latin to cold and English. The pictures date from October 1, 2007 to December 19, 2007 and they are silly. You can see them below or click on the picture to see them larger and with more information at the Picasa site:

The next batch will be Europe (and Morocco) without me. They are a little bit more interesting. But I have to get the film developed first!

Soon.
Al

Jesus Christ has a Camp

2006-12-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, I saw this movie a few months ago with Zed and Noelle. I've been talking about it an awful lot because it's one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It's called Jesus Camp. I won't say much about it. Jesus has a camp. Jesus lovers are scary. They speak in tongues and touch cardboard Bush's. Eerie. Watch this. Top priority. Watch part one below and then find the next segments on Youtube:

Al

Renouncing the Devil

2006-12-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

This was the first year in many that I took the long flight back home for my Thanksgiving break. While the feast was quite alluring (my grandmother makes a mean ham), the real reason for the voyage was one Zoe Oar:

That is Zoe. She is the daughter of Brandy and Kalani Oar, the former being one of my most beloved cousins. The young babe is nearly a year old and is a fantastic example of human genetics at its finest. She's gorgeous, Zoe is, and quiet and smiley and wonderful to hold. A very easy human being to love.

I was asked by Brandy and Kalani to become Zoe's godfather. There is, admittedly, an odd feeling that came over me when I was asked. Firstly, I'm not religious. Secondly, they (the parents of Zoe) know I'm not religous. In fact, I do believe I've explained this very story to Brandy on at least one occassion:

When I was a youngster, in first grade, I attended Riviera Hall Lutheran School. It was a great little school at the base of Palos Verdes in Redondo Beach. Part of the education there was to go to chapel once every Tuesday and then to have Bible Studies on every Thursday. Chapel was pretty awesome because Pastor Cindy let us sing songs and rock out and I was always a big fan of that. I think we even did some singing in a round. How about that? Anyway, the other thing, the Bible Studies class, it wasn't quite so wonderful. Our teachers would have us snap out our Bible Studies book, which was really just a flimsy coloring book, and we'd color in pictures of Jesus and Mary and Saul. This wasn't so bad. But, we'd also have to talk about the stories in The Bible. And, as much as the stories were pretty cool as well, I was always frustrated because there was no historical evidence for their truth. Once, we were discussing David and Goliath. I thought this story was just the shits and giggles. A little dude just like me taking out a huge heiffer of a man, well, it gave me hope. But then I raised my hand. Mrs. Steves said, "Yes, Alfred?" I said, "So, uhm, where are the bones?" She was confused and didn't understand my question. "Well," I said, "where are Goliath's bones? How do we know he was really that big?" A nice grin appeared on her face. "Alfred," she said, "this is a story from The Bible. This is God's truth. We have faith in these things. They may have been a little different, but they did happen." That wasn't good enough for me, though. "Okay," I said, "so where are the bones? I mean, we have the dinosaur bones. Where are Goliath's bones?" Mrs. Steves was frustrated and kept deflecting my question until she finally said, "Out. Outside Alfred. Timeout!"

Well, since then I've never been a big fan of religion. The stories are pretty wonderful, and I truly do understand how they can help a person get by in life, but they don't mean much to me. I've found other things (books, music) which give me a lot more strength. Thing is, I've now studied enough about the creation of The Bible and the many hundreds of years it took to create it, and I've studied about how religion has, without a doubt, been used again and again to indoctrinate and dominate less fortunate classes of people. Well, phooey! That's what I say.

But, then, why ask me to be the godfather? Well, actually, I get it. Out of anyone in our family, I do believe I'm very fit to help raise Zoe. And, in fact, I think I'm very fit to raise her in the ways of the church. Just because I'm not religious doesn't meant that I don't understand and agree with many of the moral tenants of the church. I think, at its heart, the Catholic religion has a positive idea. And it's that idea that I'm very suited to help instill in Zoe. So, of course, I said yes.

So then there we were, Alicia (Brandy's sister and Zoe's godmother) and I, on the steps of American Martyr's Church, renouncing the devil and accepting Jesus as our one true savior. Holy apostolic church, holy water, a dunking of Zoe's head, and the deed was done. All I could think about for most of the ceremony was the fact that my own godfather, Bob Trumpeta, once did the same thing and how I couldn't see him getting through the thing without a hefty dose of laughter. Probably his bones were jiggling in his grave. Zoe was fussy, which is unusual for her, and I grabbed her and held her and, with the help of her holy candle, she calmed down. We feasted and hung out with family and it was a memory added to the memory banks. It looked like this:

Me and Zoe

Me and Thanksgiving (I made cream puffs)

Me and the room I grew up in

Syd Vicious, my niece

Brandy the Chef

dice game that I won

Mother Jo

Me and Sister Amy

Zoe and Uncle Zack

Thanksgiving Crew

So then came Thanksgiving and I won everyone's money during this dice-throwing game my mom made us play. I got $86 and that was nice. I've almost run out of it at this point, but it turned into some good sandwiches along the way. I played with my niece Syd Vicious a bunch. I went to Shellback (our local bar) with Tolga and saw old nobodies still being busy with their own lives. I tried to run and hacked up a lung. I slaved away at a horrible story. I ate lots of Mexican food. I watched my half-brother implode and start throwing shit at my family and then watched him drive off drunk as all hell, which, of course, is totally okay since he's a cop.

A classic Thanksgiving trip home. Cat Power with Michelle, too. And a trip up to the hills with Alicia and Mike:

And at least I got to renounce the devil. Fuck him.

Then my mom drove me to the airport in darkness:

Then I flew back to NYC:

Al

Lame En Fuego:

2006-11-28T12:21:00.000-08:00

What's lame is when something you've never second-guessed puffs up in flames. What I mean is that I never ever even entertained the thought that El Sombrero wouldn't exist. For instance, it's like thinking about gravity just all of a sudden not being around anymore. You don't think about that. You accept the fates of our heliocentric world. You say to yourself, there is gravity, there has always been gravity, we will never be free of its horrendous shackles. Ball up, ball down. Now until eternity.

So too with El Som. Number five, light on the lechuga, all rice, no beans por favor. Chicken Sombrero Burrito. Root beer. And yes, more salsa. Always more salsa.

But now it has gone up in flames. Now sixty firefighters have come and doused it with water. Now there is no more roof and there is no more mural and there is no more lollipop dish.

Which, I guess, isn't entirely true. There is El Sombrero Number Two over on Artesia. And, surely, El Som will soon be back with the same food and the same cooks and Jose will still work there with his big thick moustache. This will come to pass. In fact, being so far away for so many months, I'll probably not even notice that it's gone. I'll notice new paint. A new stucco, flame-retardant building. I'll notice those but won't much mind.

But:

There is something frustrating about the booths being gone. About the tables being different. About my children never getting to experience El Som like I did. Beacuse it isn't just about food, somehow. It's also about the fact that that building held many moments of my life. Dinners with my sister and mother, me pouring salt on to a wetted napkin upon which I'd rub my chips. Eating cheese quesadillas or McDonald's because I hated Mexican food. Or then getting it, realizing Mexican food really is the only food you need, and ordering in Spanish because Ms. Galvin gave us extra credit. Or those group dates there. The salty smell of that tiny bathroom.

What's lame is having the husk swapped out for something I never wanted or desired. I was fine with the old husk. The husk that burned last night for five hours. That husk, that sturdy restaurant shell, it served me well and housed my growing up nicely. I think it would have housed many more growing ups with great success. But it will never get the chance.

Sentimental, but, well, lame.
Lame lame lame.
Etceteras.
Scooters razed.
Now this.

Shitty,
Al

I Read Books, Too (Two)

2006-11-16T20:43:00.000-08:00

It seems that all I do is read. I read a lot. When people ask me what school here is like, it isn't something I feel easily translates for most people. It's not really "school," per se. Or, rather, not any type of "school" that I am used to. Mostly I just mean that everything is lax. The daily demands of each class are rather slim-to-none. Homework is usually allowed to come late. Professors are not strict about dates or following directions. Basically, school here is whatever you make of it. For me, that means reading. And reading and reading.

Mostly, before college, my book reading was limited mostly to novels. Ambrose Bierce helped me appreciate the short story in my high school days when I read "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge." I just had my students (yes, I teach!) read it and I think they got a lot out of it. Or enough out of it. Still, as wonderful as that story was for me, I never "got into" the short story writers. Especially, I never got into the short story writers of modernity. Since heading off to Princeton, and especially now at Columbia, I've come to champion and acknowledge the short story as the metaphorical fastball of fiction. If you don't have a good working knowledge of the short story, or the modern short story writers that are helping to reformulate just exactly what fiction ("fiction") can do, I guess I just figured I'd throw some names out there. Hooray. If nothing else, my Uncle Jerry will get some mileage out of these names.

I read about four or five short stories a day it seems. I can't sleep lately. I get up and head to the pot and prop a short story on my lap and away I go. These are the new breed of short story homeboys that I'm jocking like platinum grills:

a) Kevin Moffett - this dude just won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award for Permanent Visitors. His stories take our world and offer a hitch, offer caveat, slash it open with exacto knife slashes. Consider "The Medicine Man," wherein a twenty-something dude attempts to save his sister's fetus via a Safeway employee. Real good.

b) Deb Olin Unferth - besides having a great name, this woman writes some of the best short short fiction I've managed to down lately. She's an "up and comer" with a book due out in the Spring from McSweeney's (more on them later). She's given us a story for the Columbia Journal (where I'm fiction editor) and it's all about dead composers. She works little turns of magic.

c) Rebecca Curtis - an admitted bias here: she is my teacher. However, she's great. Objectively speaking, even. She got into the "new fiction" edition of the New Yorker and, from that, has launched herself into a book of short stories that will be out next year. She either writes simple, realistic stories (which I don't like so much) or really wacky, odd, topsy-turvy stories (which I love) like this one: "The Wolf at the Door"

d) Gabe Hudson - the book you're going to want to read is Dear Mr. President and you're going to want to read it as soon as possible. The stories in that book are all reminiscent of the title story, stories that are written using the guise of the first Gulf War to fully explore exciting emotional realities of modern day living. He's really great. Again, sort of biased as he was teaching at Princeton when I left, but his expertise can't be denied. Let yourself be swept away!

e) Courtney Eldridge - I read "Young Professionals" the other day and was pissed off because she made writing seem so goddamn easy. The book is Unkempt and it is better than most sex and all chocolates.

f) Robert Coover - by far one of the greatest living writers still tapping away at the keyboards. Pricksongs and Descants is the golden orb upon which I often slather. It is sitting next to my bed. He is the super creator of modern day wonderfulness.

g) George Saunders - it feels silly to me that people might not have read this man. It's hard to think I hadn't until last year. He's a master. Everything flows from the voice of his narrators, the verve of the prose. Each story is like a rollercoaster. You can't stop until you are done and you don't ever want it to stop. CivilWarLand In Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation are all ready for you to read. Do it!

h) McSweeney's - I said I'd mention it later and now it's later. Read McSweeney's. It's tough for me to jump onto a bandwagon and continue to toot its horn even after so many others have joined the float and have slowed down the journey so, but this is really the Bible of current short fiction. McSweeney's is a publishing house run by Dave Eggers (author of the much-heralded A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) which publishes great new novels that big publishers are afraid to take risks with. They also publish a quarterly journal that features all of the authors I've mentioned so far. Check the thing out. Get into it.

I guess, lastly, I also wanted to mention this book:

It is called The Loser and it is by Thomas Bernhard. One day he will be touted as a modern master. He writes long, digression-filled interior monologues that, while sometimes taxing and difficutlt to wade through, somehow manage to explain the absurdities of living a human life with great complexity and accuracy. I read this book in two nights. I will soon finish reading all he's ever written.

So there you are.
Some more books to read.
Some authors to explore.

I've got a lot more stuff to put up here: a new camera, a new visitor to the pad, a trip back home for Thanksgiving.

Soon,
Al

Halloween Get-Up

2006-11-01T18:44:00.000-08:00

As a child, I spent my Halloween nights over at my Aunt Suzie's. There, my cousins Mikey and D.C. and John would roam the streets of Torrance and come back with Big Brown Bags full of candy. I never ate much candy. I still don't eat much candy. But there was something not-to-be-missed about those Halloweens. There was a guy who always decked his house out to the nines; cobwebs, mummies, dry ice. It smelled like Halloween back then. My costumes (Zorro, Skeletor, a ghost) would have glowstick sauce on them and my tongue would be coated with the taste of toxic chemicals from biting through the plastic.

Once my mom took me to the Galleria mall dressed as an ewok. I was very little.

Or Halloween was also Knott's Scary Farm when I was a teenager. Trying to figure out if I was more scared of the shaker can sounds clamboring from the darkness or my own sweaty palms. I remember making out with Katherine Caballero on the dinosaur ride which, sadly, is very much now a real ghost. Or taking big charter bus excursions to the theme park and having all these kids get drunk in the back. And then having to be the one of the only sober ones and running through the park rounding everyone up because the Asian driver wouldn't leave without everyone checked off his list. I felt like a parent that night, which sucked. But also there was the fact that I lost my virginity that night. The good with the bad.

Halloween is intertwined with Dani's birthday, as well. I used to resent that.

And I was always home for Halloween during college because we had Fall Break. No one else was home, usually, and so I'd hand out candy to the three or four groups that straggled to our home.

Lately, my mom has been going nuts with decorating for Halloween. I wonder if it makes her feel better about something missing in her life. Or if it's just nostalgia. I like that it makes her happy.

So, anyway, I hate Halloween these days. It doesn't smell like Halloween anymore. Just Red Bull and vodka. And I don't want to sound like a prude scrooge, but I'm pretty annoyed with the crotch grinding, skimp clothing festival it becomes at this age. I was at parties all over this city this past week, at some West Villiage fancy shmancy apartments and at a place called Crobar (which played unce music until I had a headache), none of them actually on Halloween, and I didn't have any fun. The Villiage Halloween Parade was interesting, but just bodies and bodies and bodies rubbing on mine with this slow friction I can't stand. Bahumbug.

I hear Sydney was a cat. I would have liked to have seen that.

Anyway, I bought some warm clothes for the coming winter. And that was my costume. Just me keeping warm. My Halloween get-up:

San Fran Bison!

2006-10-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last week, I took a vacation. A vacation! I guess that word comes from "vacate" which, though I'm too lazy to look it up, means "to leave" or "to exit" or, maybe, "to leave behind." I left the ugly city of New York for the beautiful San Francisco and crossed my fingers for a nice time. Twas.

Michelle and Tim + Madeleine live in the Bay Area and therein lies the rationale for my destination. Michelle and I had/have been going through confusing/difficult times and it was good for me to get out there to see her. It was August when I had last seen her, had left her up there on Haight. Two months and 3,000 miles later, I showed up at SFO and headed towards her.

But the BART had stopped running. Not cool.

The taxi to USF cost $40. But it was a quick drive up the 101 and down into the city and I was excited to be in California. Strange, but just being in the state makes life seem more normal. Michelle was talking to me one day about how the air in different places feels different. How you go to a new city and get out of the plane or the car and you suck in the air and it just feels different, sits differently in your lungs. Heavier sometimes. Stranger. I know what she means. Once you get used to the air a place becomes a little more like "home." Which is how, basically, anywhere in California is for me now. Anywhere not the East Coast. Though, I should say, New York feels like "home" as well, I guess. I can close my eyes and navigate the subways. I know which way is uptown and dowtown and where the food that I like is. Still, I will never feel comfortable with this stale air. The air here is microwave exhaust. Tail pipe hell. Even more horrible than air from home. Home home. Los Angeles. Which, though filled with smog, is the best air on earth.

Anyway, I got to USF and saw Michelle and hugged her for a long time and it was really wonderful to see her.

I slept in her prison of a dorm for a few days and at Tim's over in Berkeley for a few days where I took a picture from his roof (see top) and another one of his new bookshelf scheme:

I went to SFMOMA and saw some wonderful photographs. A Robert Frank print of New Orleans. Some Ed Ruscha stuff. Tim and Madeleine threw a little party shindig and I fell asleep in the other room with winos getting drunk next to me. I took a lot of busses. I saw Kimpossible and Priyesh at Amoeba in Berkeley. Which is nice. To see people from the South Bay in distant lands at random times.

But there were some horrible things. I lost my Canon AE-1. My camera. Left it on the BART when I was transfering. Horrible. Michelle and I fought some. She smoked a lot. A lot a lot. Like Grandma Jack used to. I saw The Departed which was not that great. And I saw Little Miss Sunshine (again) which was (again) great. The scene with the horn honking forever and ever on and on is hilarious to me. I ate good foods. Burritos and things like that. I slept next to a warm body that, though she may not always show it, loves me.

By far, the most awesome moment I had was visiting with the bison in Golden Gate Park. Who knew they had bison? I didn't. Then I looked at this map:

I saw the bison paddock on the map. So, during some freetime, I went there. Took the 5 bus to 36th Ave and walked right in. And there they were. In their paddock:

They didn't move much, those bison, and it was a bit sad. Maybe a bit more than a bit sad. I imagine that it might be some hippie idea to get those big animals to roam about their park. And, truth be told, I've never seen bison so I don't know if they are happier in their natural habitat. But I have to think so. Here, they just ate grass and went "hrmph" a bunch and didn't even seem happy to see me. I watched them for a while though. Tough animals. Don't-fuck-with-me animals. Hefty brutes. I'd like to be friends with bison.

The trip to San Francisco was awesome. Needed. A hickey of a time. A real bruiser. Tim's place looked great. Tim looked pretty swell, too:

And I really liked his roof:

And there were some cool leaves over by Askew Grill, where Michelle works:

Also, there was a woman that talked to us on the 38 bus about how she loves to hike now that her children are gone and grown up. About how she forgave travels for a long time because of them, but now that she's old, she's up to her old tricks again. She was wearing boots and a warm jacket and had just hiked all over some trails by the beach in Marin County.

I want to keep traveling right on through my kids. With them. Should I ever have them.

I'll end now. Here's a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. Many people die after jumping off it:

Al

Interweb Al!

2006-10-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to link to some places on the fearful interweb that I've shown up lately. I think one day I want to exist completely without the computer. It eats up so much of my time. Like a lawnmower of minutes. Blargh.

Anyway:

An interview talking about DANGERS and the like
A review of "Anger"
A place to buy "Anger"

For the moment, let's thank our lucky stars that that's all there is for e-me.

Al

On Books (1)

2006-09-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

I also read books. And, really, I do. Not as much or as many as I'd like, but still, I do. Books are wonderful. I like words. The sounds words make. The way certain orderings of certain words can evoke emotions like hate and anger and desperation. But, mostly, the thing I like about books is when you feel as though the author has come over for a private visit with you to let you in on a little secret. Shhhhhh, says the author, don't let anyone know but man oh man do I have a story to tell you!

It's my goal this year to go on a reading rampage. I'm still relatively new to the whole reading game, so I don't feel so bad about not having read some of the "classics" or "gems" or "quiet masterpieces" of our time. But it's high time I get with it and start digesting some books. I'll try to post some stuff on here about my forays into reading. I feel as though I really shouldn't attempt it with much gusto, however, because Nick Hornby already does this whole schtick over at The Believer. Still, I've wanted to chart my reading history for quite some time and this place seems as good as any, no? Yes, it does.

So here are some books I purchased recently with links to purchase them yourself, should you feel so inclined. Oh, the links will be to Powell's Books (Oregon) when possible, or Labyrinth (New York), places where you should try to buy your books. Independent bookstores are the only bookstores for me! Usually. Anyway, the list of books purchased:

Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov (translated by Dimitri Nabokov)
Zoetrope All-Story Vol 10 No 3
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Dear Mr. Capote by Gordon Lish
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch
Lost Positives by John Cotrona
The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Walker Evans (a monograph)

Of those books, I've already gotten around to reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Lost Positives by John Cotrona, and The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme. I've been, admittedly, very late getting aboard the Vonnegut bus. I'm not exactly sure why I never picked up a book by him. I think a lot of it has to do with the notions of science-fiction that I associated with the man, and also with the fact that I felt since I had already read Ray Bradbury there wasn't a point to dealing with Vonnegut. I know, now, how dumb that is and that there isn't much of a relation between the two other than the fact that they lived during the same century and were both good writers, but, well... It's interesting to see how the mind works. I connected the title Ferenheit 451 with Slaughterhouse-Five in my head and, thus, felt like I had read both by reading one. So dumb of me. Especially because Vonnegut is so absolutely brilliant. The real start of my newfound fascination was a girl named Stephanie. She had a tattoo of the infinity symbol on her back (no, not in that dumb lower back area that acts as an ejaculation target) and when I told her it seemed sort of silly she explained that it was from Breakfast of Champions. Oh, said I, feeling dumb, because any tattoo that is related to a book is a good tattoo in my opinion. So then I read Breakfast of Champions and was awed by how fast I read through, about how captivated I was, about how there was something about his direct address of the reader that was unique and not affected or cheap. It was great, and made me think. So then, Slaughterhouse-Five didn't dissappoint me in the slightest. The story of Dresden's destruction through the time-travelling eyes of Billy Pilgrim. Bravo. So it goes.

John Cotrona was once the manager at the bookstore I frequent here (Labyrinth). Apparently he tired of selling books and decided to write his own. Lost Positives takes off where Aaron Cometbus leaves off (the book is, indeed, dedicated to Mr. Cometbus). But the stories inside this little book are decidedly Cotrona's. They exist on endless stretches of road, in mobile home parks in Alaska, in beds with women who leave, in bottles of alcohol. There's a lot of texture in these stories and they charmed me. A quick read, but one where you'll be wondering if you've just read fiction or non-fiction, and the blurring of that line always gets me, a la Bukowski, Fante, Hamsun, et al.

As you can see by the secondary name of this "blog," I'm quite a Donald Barthelme fan. Mandatory reading would be the two Penguin collections of his short stories: Sixty Stories and Forty Stories. It's quite a thrill to be able to say that I've never read anyone that writes like Barthelme. How rare is it to say that? And to say it with 100 percent honest conviction? His writing is because of this world, but not of this world. It exists in a strange grey area where giant half-dead, half-mechanized fathers can be dragged across the wilderness. And where, in the same story, four friends eat prawns. There is a preciseness in all of his eccentricity. An earnestness. A way in which you can feel him frustrated with the world, perhaps so frustrated that all he can do is laugh. And, when you read his books, you laugh in this special way where you realize you are laughing at yourself, at what you believe, at just how ludicrous life and living is. Bravo. A master.

So, then, while I'm on subject of Donald Barthelme, I figure I should explain where some of the books on that recently purchased list up there are from. I was roaming around the interweb the other day and found an article from the archives on The Believer's site written by Kevin Moffett. See if you can follow this: Kevin Moffett was instructed in the ways of writing by Padgett Powell. Padgett Powell, in turn, was instructed in the ways of writing by Donald Barthelme. Passed down from generation to generation was Barthelme's "syllabus," the 91 books that he finds to be mandatory reading. Read the article, but, more importantly, look at the lists:

The Believer, incidentally, is a great non-fiction magazine with articles about many things literary, a lot of things musical, certain things comedic, but all of which are very interesting. The subscription is pretty cheap, so try it on for size.

Lastly, I'll leave you with a video I watched the other day on the interweb. Charles Bukowski is another favorite writer of mine. I feel as though I'm not really allowed to say that. I feel as though, if you plan on being any sort of "writer" with any sort of "credibility" you can't say that you "like" good 'ole Buk. Hogwash. The dude was a dude of the highest caliber and his books read like stale milk that, somehow, tastes good. Michelle watched this documentary on Buk called Born Into This the other day and it got me thinking that there might be some footage of the man online. And, boy oh boy, was I correct! Make sure you watch the whole thing:

You fuckin' shit.
Al

Last of the Milka Maus

2006-09-28T18:23:00.001-07:00

So, I have finally ate the last of the Milka Maus. The Milka Maus chocolate candies became a favorite of mine last year when my former flatmate, Matthias, introduced them to me. Matthias is a German man from Dresden, the grandson of Nazi officers, the victim of evil Eastern Germany tyranny and fascism, a witness to the tearing down of The Wall, a law professor, a kind man, a good man, a good-sized man, and a connoisseur of exotic womenfolk. Anyway, Matthias, who I'll now refer to as Matthias the Great, was also a connoisseur of chocolates (and cheese, wine, tabacco, etc) and brought back many fine specimens to our little Apartment 45. Anyway, Matthias the Great took off for Germany earlier this summer so the last time I saw him was way back in May. Boo. Thumbs down. But, the sweetheart that he is, Matthias the Great left a box of Milka Maus chocolate candies sitting on my desk, awaiting my return.

The candies are little bear-like mice creatures that melt well in the mouth and coat the tongue with a rich, milk chocolate goodness. I think they are supposed to be healthier than normal chocolate because there is some carob or something in there, but, well, I eat them because they are great tasting. I was limiting myself to one or two a day and savoring both thier goodness and Matthias' kind gesture. But now: they are gone!

It was a sad last bite, but one that had been coming for quite some time. It got me thinking about the Milka family of chocolate products and I figured I'd give the interweb some scouring so as to find out a bit more about the goodies brought forth under the Milka name. My findings were, ahem, horrific. First, I traced Milka back the Kraft family of foods. I had a bad feeling about that from the get-go, but went ahead and delved deeper, and here is what I found out about the Kraft family of foods:

The house the Marlboro Man built, Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris Companies), is the world's largest tobacco firm. Altria operates its cigarette business through subsidiaries Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International, which sell Marlboro -- the world's best-selling cigarette brand since 1972. The company controls about half of the US tobacco market. However, tobacco is only part of its portfolio. It owns some 87% of Kraft Foods, the world's #2 food company (after Nestlé), which makes Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Maxwell House, Oscar Mayer, and Post. The tobacco giant bought Nabisco in late 2000, folding it into Kraft. Altria owns about 29% of SABMiller plc. (info from Hoovers)

Boo! Boo, boo, boo!!! I hate when shit like this happens. You go about your life happily, consuming products that make you feel good and happy and a little more comfortable, and you search out products made by companies that you think are conscious and responsible and friendly. You eat Chipotle with a clear mind because they do the whole free-range animals thing. Or, perhaps, you eat some Milka Maus chocolate candies because they are made in Germany and, therefore, must be better and more socially conscious than any American counterparts. But no. OH NO. You eat the damn chocolate and then realize only after the fact that your support of the Milka company means you are really supporting Philip Morris and shitty cigarettes and then you go poop, poop, poop.

I guess what I'm saying is that everything really is owned by two or three companies in the end. Eat local, drink local, blah blah blah. The money trickles upwards to the bigwigs eventually.

Anyway, enough grumbling. Here's a picture of Matthias:

Al

The Most Beautiful Girl In The Entire World

2006-09-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is the most beautiful girl in the world:

Her name is Sydney and I love her in a way I've never known possible. She gives the term "homesick" real meaning.

UncAL

The Biggest of Apples

2006-09-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

This is where I live:

Sometimes it can look beautiful, like it does there. It can be systematic and functional and gleaming. Sort of like magic. A real-life snowglobe. I can enjoy myself here. I can walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with:

(Adam)

(Tim Tim Cheroo)

(their friend, Sheila)

(and my friend, Zed.)

It can be a great night where I eat Mamoun's falafel in Greenwhich Village and party hardy all night and argue with Adam about the merits of the word "faggot." Needless to say, I took the side of that word having few merits. Adam took the grumpy, hard-headed, drunk baby side. Either way, it can be a night that goes by so fast that I forget that the city is full of trash and rain and cockroaches that scuttle out from the elevator's ventelation shaft. I forget that the construction in the apartment next door to mine will get going at about 7:30am. That the construction workers will whistle happly while they work. That I'll start 18 dreams that will all mush together each time the sledgehammer smacks the wall. Forget that I have no rug on my floor. That I miss my German roommate. That the chocolate Milka bears are running out.

And then, to come home like I did last night, and have Michelle tell me that she and her friend Scott had been held up at gunpoint, that the two dudes who pointed the guns at them ran off witih her purse and his bag, that she was scared and upset and pissed off.

Anyway, having visitors like Adam and Tim and Sheila make New York and the rest of the world a little more bearable. They make the gun pointers and the gleaming boxes seem less scary.

But the rain hasn't stopped for days...

Al

Michellabama

2006-09-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a whole bunch of things but then thought better of it because this picture says about all I really want to say. Anyway, Michelle is wonderful, etceteras, etceteras. A lady from home but now in San Francisco. Far too hip for me x 100. Alas.

crushed,
Al

Four Men and a Baby

2006-09-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

Cast of Characters:

MAN 1 (ROLLIE/GUITAR)

MAN 2 (AL/VOCALS)

MAN 3 (TIM/BASS)

MAN 4 (TIM TIM CHEROO/ROADIE)

BABY (ADAM/DRUMS)

***

ACT 1 (VENTURA)

Rollie leaves late, like always, and the van shows up at my house about two hours after I expected it to. The drive was to Ventura and through all that wonderful traffic, and the being-late factor of our journey really helped things get off to a superb start. Only not. But the van was nicer than we thought:

We borrowed it from a band called Radiation 4 and, seeing as how I’ve only toured in a van one other time, I felt like we were in the lap of luxury. Air conditioning, iPod, automatic windows, and a loft! We got all our equipment in there and then or merch and even had room for our puny little bodies and away we went. We showed up to The Alpine, a venue at Skatestreet in Ventura, and there were about eight other kids there. I think four of them were in the opening band. Needless to say, we weren’t entirely enthused by the turnout. Still, it was the start of tour and we had played the awesome show at Sink With Cali IV the day before so spirits were riding high. Greg MacPherson met us there in his little rental car and got things going with a set of music that was magical. He played four or five songs and each was moving because of the way Greg sang his head off and jammed his fingers down over the strings. He played a song called “The Company Store” that was about his grandfather, a man who had worked in a coal mining town wherein the mines owned all the stores and all the everything so that they would pay their workers shitty wages and then make them pay that money right back to them at said stores. The song was chilling when he played it, with force and anger, like Greg had been one of the men charging to burn down the town. Watching him made a lot of the things I’ve learned from punk rock come into focus and make a lot of sense to me. We got up and played to ten or twelve people, but it was as good as playing to a sold out crowd for me. By the time we got to “We Have More Sense Than Lies,” I was able to get everyone looking into my eyes and had them all saying, “Nothing changes if we don’t change ourselves.” It was wonderful. After the show, we all (most of the kids at the show as well) went to Chili’s and ate with Greg and made plans to travel all over Canada with him (Newfoundland sounds awesome) and then said goodbyes and got on our way. Up the 101. And then (ahem) the 1. Yup. Big Sur!

ACT 2 (SANTA ROSA)

We slept on the side of the road, after Adam got tired of driving up the windy roads of Highway 1, and when we awoke the Pacific lay out in front of our pissing bodies, blue and forever. I took over the reigns and went too fast here and there and made Tim feel like vomiting because he was lounging in the loft and getting dizzy. Getting to the Henry Miller Library felt familiar and comfortable, and I really like that. Fourth time to Big Sur and I felt like it was mine, if only in part, like I could be a local one day. We purchased breakfast burritos at the great general store (Big Sur food establishments are excellent) and at in the sun and washed faces in the bathroom and dipped feet in the creek behind the bed and breakfasts and then headed off to Garrapata State Beach. We roamed about and the boys got lost in the cracks of the rocks and Adam, the baby, made sounds like a baby and tried to jump over the estuary area:

There were far too many tourists this time of year and the beach didn’t feel like it was ours at all, which was rather disappointing. We managed to work our way into a cave towards the south end of the beach and Tim went womping in the waves:

The rest of the drive was up the 101, past Santa Cruz and through SF and over the Golden Gate Bridge and I thought a lot about Michelle at this point and that bummed me out a bit.

But we were up in Santa Rosa in no time and, after we drove around and got our bearings, found Epiphany Music by following the sounds of the drum circle. The venue was a used instrument shop that had a stage at one end where local bands came and played now and then. We hurried off to the mall before the show and made Tim Tim Cheroo ask punk-rock-looking folk to come out to the show. One such man was James, the poor Hot Dog On A Stick vendor that Tim Tim and I haggled and pestered. James showed up to the show later that night just after we had done this:

But, for his diehard efforts, we gave poor James the poor Hot Dog On A Stick guy our record for free. Later, we received this email transmission from him. Probably the best email I’ve ever received:

Hey, I just got home and popped your CD into my computer. Your CD rocks. Hard. It's like someone broke into my house and beat me in the head with a crowbar and I just sat there thinking "Oh my lord, this feels so good." Yeah. That kind of hard rock. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you guys made my day. I wasn't actually supposed to work today, and then you guys were really funny and nice, so I decided to check the show out and you gave me your CD for free. Which was awesome. Awesome that you gave me a CD for free and the CD itself was awesome. Just clarifying.

Thanks again, James aka. the Kid Who Works At Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick in Santa Rosa
And if you're ever in town again, just send me an email. I'd love to see you live.

Yup. Beat that!

ACT III (DAY OFF)

So this day was interesting. It was nice to be on a tour where we took our time and had a day off and enjoyed where we were. We drove on Highway 101 and I saw beaches and redwood forests and wine country up north that I had never seen. We stopped off at the Drive-Through Tree, but our van was too large, so we had to walk through:

Then we stopped at the Eel River and the boys went in and jumped off a rope swing:

The algae turned me away and I just threw rocks at the water like a grump and then threw one too far and hit Rollie just below his eye and he freaked out and maybe he should have but I wasn’t TRYING to hit him, but I did, and that sucks, and, well, we got back in the van and continued up north. We were in Humboldt County and everything lived up to the stereotype. We at organic Mexican food at Nacho Mama in Garberville. As we guzzled down in the back, flies buzzed around our head, and an 18-year-old girl named Simone came in and chatted with us, smiled, showed us the hair under her arms, and eventually gave Rollie and Adam a boll to share. Hooray. I ate a sweet malt from Treats and grabbed a handful of condoms out of the free jar on the way out and it was another small town loaded with hippiefolk so it felt okay to leave quickly, without pictures. A bit later, however, we did stop and see elk in a field near the Oregonian border:

And sometime after this we got gas in Crescent City and we wondered if The Goonies was filmed up there because it looked like it was. And then I fell asleep.

ACT IV (BREMERTON)

When I awoke, we were in old familiar Portland, Oregon and I was excited to eat Honkin’ Huge Burritos, which was our very first stop of the day:

These burritos are all organic and the guacamole is guacamole I actually enjoy eating. The man that makes them offers a plethora of hot sauces and BBQ sauces to splash on top, as well as a special super secret salsa that Tim managed to snaggle. It was fully fulfilling and almost made tour worth it on its own. While Adam and Tim Tim went to break their bones over at Burnside Skatepark, Tim and Rollie and I went to Powell’s Books:

I picked up Double Duce by Aaron Cometbus for Michelle, The Book of Ten Nights and a Night by John Barth, and The Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski: Volume 1 and also saw the new copy of the Columbia Journal and glanced inside and saw my name in a bookstore for the first time. I liked the feeling. I like bookstores. More and more, I feel like bookstores encourage me to write more than any other place. I want my name up on the shelves. If only one little skinny book, I want to be tucked away in the BR area. I’ll go to bookstores when we tour and sign the books secretly and put hidden artifacts of my life, like receipts and scraps of paper with phone numbers on them, in the spines. Anyway, we got back on the road and kept driving, which is what tour is, driving eight hours a day for twenty minutes of music playing, and, that being the case, this picture is a good representation of What Tour Is:

But then we got to Bremerton and I’ve already talked a bit about these kids elsewhere, I think, but, Jesus Christ, what a fucking inspiring group of 16 year olds. They all live together in a house without parents, like Lost Boys, and they are all in bands that are (honestly) good, and they cover Minor Threat and SSD, and they know every word to all of our songs. We didn’t get to play in The Tiki House this time because there’s a new neighbor that hassles the boys, but The Sons Of Norway show was awesome as well. Everyone crowded around us and we started with “The Tiki House” and it was like someone lit a firecracker in the tiny room and, even though Rollie and Tim kept getting electrocuted, and even though Adam’s drums were stepped on by foot after foot (mine included), it was easily the best show we’ve played. This is what it is, in part: you know nothing about the daily lives of these kids, but those twenty minutes we share makes it obvious that the daily life stuff is just details. The real important stuff can be communicated over thousands of miles, through plastic discs and computer wires. So, even though I don't know the name of their firsts girlfriends or what their favorite meal is, I feel like I know each one of those kids to the bone. All it takes is them looking straight into my eye.

Three of them (Sean, Allison, Dustin) have our words tattooed on the back of their necks:

("Broken hearts beat just fine")

("Sit back and sing along")

(Dustin has: "Flex your head")

I’m not sure what that makes me feel, but it’s humbling and it’s a place I never thought my words would be. Anyway, the show was everything we could have wanted. We met up with Annie and headed off to her apartment and slept the night away. Oh, but first we fed baby Adam blueberry buckle and he threw a fit. Then sleep.

ACT V (TACOMA)

We awoke and I had a plan that I made us stick to: Snoqualmie Falls. I had been there with The Miracle Mile, but this was after Tim had quit, so I really wanted him to see it. The falls are just outside of Seattle and are in the town where they filmed Twin Peaks. The falls are something like three-hundred feet tall, and roar and thunder:

Tim Tim swam out to the far side of the falls and got a peak behind the falls where there is a suspicious looking bridge, but he reported back that it was all just warning signs and rusted nails. Sad. No gold. The falls were more impressive before, for some reason, and I think it’s because there were less tourists and more nature, and it was later in the day, sunset, or, well, I don’t know. So we left and headed off into traffic and, soon, found our way to The Manium in Tacoma. Supposedly, there’s this Satan-worshiping dentist that listens to black metal and has slowly but surely purchased venue after venue in Tacoma. When he does, he paints the venue black and lets the kids run the shows. Hooray for Satan, I say! The show had a lot of Bremerton kids and The Flex played and we lost our minds and it felt wonderful and I realized somewhere during our set that there had been no fights, no threats, no violence, and our band had gotten along the entire tour and it made everything feel successful and worthwhile and, really, I was having “the time of my life.”

ACT VI (OAKLAND)

My camera ran out of space by this day, which is frustrating because Tim Tim jumped off a 70-foot bridge at Whiskeytown Lake in Redding with a few other drunk boys from Santa Cruz. He also didn’t die doing it, which was a plus. Also, we played in Oakland at the Acts of Sedition house and there were fifteen people in a small living room and I stood very still for most of this set until it had all built up and it was our last show for three months and there were kids that had never and will never see us again and I lost my head and we played perfect for that moment and it was cold outside so that all of the sweat froze to me, even in August, and then tour was done and it was time for it to be done, and so we left Oakland and headed out.

Only, I went to my cousin Jennea’s apartment in San Francisco while the boys went back to LA. First, though, I picked up Michelle. Which means I guess it’s probably time to talk about her.

Hip Calcium Deposits

2006-09-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

We played this show at the beggining of summer. Meaning May 2006. It's a place called the SOS Project out in Riverside, CA. They had gymnastics there during the day I think. I do a bit of my own gymnastics, as you'll see:

I did this little freefall-jump-thing every night of our tour when we went up the coast. Every night I'd land on my left hip. A jump from a two foot stage. A jump from the P.A. speaker, four feet up. A six foot stage. It got higher and higher every night. Eventually Tim got really annoyed so I tried to do it more, but he ended up boxing me in for the last two shows and I couldn't complete my crazy rockstar manuever. Serves me right, though: I think I bruised my hip and now have a calcium deposit that hurts like the dickens when I try to lie on my left side. I was sleeping up on Tim's hardwood floor in Berkeley and woke Michelle (explanation forthcoming) with a yelp.

Also, I went to CBGB's for the last time in my life tonight.
I hate that place, but rest in piece.

Al

Sink With California Festival IV

2006-09-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

When I was a sophomore in college, I applied for and received a grant from Princeton to start a music festival. I convinced them it was to bring kids/young adults together in a productive, progressive scene to share ideas through music. While this is generally true, the idea was also to get kids to come to southern California. To enjoy the beach. To rock out and eat burritos and get away from whatever boring suburb they were living in for a few days. I named it after one of my favorite songs (“Sink With Kalifornija”) by one of my favorite bands (Youth Brigade).

Four years later, the festival has become a yearly mecca for some awesome punk bands and some crazy punk kids and some not so awesome punk bands and some pretty run-of-the-mill kids. A good time nonetheless. An endeavor I run with the help of bandmates and friends, mostly Tim, who is also the general manager of my life, generally speaking. This year was exceptionally difficult. A few other menfolk who are not-so-supportive of any/all things Al Brown decided to get a different festival going. In doing so, they snaked a lot of the headlining bands that would’ve drawn a lot of kids to our festival. So then, with the air snatched from our sails, Tim and I delved deeper into our sack of bands and pulled out a roster that we were most proud of: Acts of Sedition, Burial Year, Sabertooth Zombie, Another Breath, Broken Needle, 108, Greg MacPherson, Parallax, and all the Bremerton, WA bands (Sunset Riders, The Flexxx, Valley of the Dinosaurs, H.I.V.). There were more, too, and we hoped that kids would come out and rock out and be crazy.

The kids did not come.

I lost a great deal of money and was really frustrated and, by Sunday, when DANGERS (our band) was scheduled to play, I had a lot of emotion running through me. We set up to play and just sort of let loose. We hadn’t played a show in three months, hadn’t played half of the songs on our set live, ever, and just sort of rammed them out like a battering ram:

Cathartic and exciting. The reason that losing money is no real loss at all. Not affecting a lot of kids, but affecting a few kids a great deal. Feeling alive. Forever moments. That sort of thing.

Al

Thunderstorm, Part Deux

2006-09-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

After I graduated from college, Tim and I drove back to California in his rickshaw Kia Sephia. When we got to Oklahoma, nature or Nature or NATURE decided to throw a code-red style thunder storm at us until I hyperventilated and thought I was going to die.

After the Painted Desert, nature or Nature or NATURE decided to do it again:

The Painted Desert

2006-09-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

Tis been a while. I've come from everywhere to this little island in New York and in the interim I was going mad and I haven’t really said one word about all that here. I feel as though my mother might lose complete track of me should I not record the goings-on of my life on this website, to be stored in some far-away cavern of the Interweb forever and ever, ad infinitum. Thusly, I’ll get on with the tale telling. Hopefully this will end up being chronological. Order! Organization! Tidiness! We start with the wilds of the Arizonian desert. Hizzah!

***

So after a decent, belly-full-of-Carl’s-Jr. sleep, I got out of the EconoLodge and back into the Ford Ranger and sped out of Albuquerque as fast as my four cylinders would allow. Interstate 40 is long and hearty, good gravel for most of the way, well-striped and fairly free of hazards (potholes, carrion, abandoned vehicles). All in all, a solid eight out of ten on the scale of Interstate Amazingness and Driveability. But it is also sad. Old Route 66 peters along right next to I-40, cracked and patchy, grass tufts popping out between withered asphalt, road signs dangling from rusty poles with rusty screws. At points, you can see old gas stations that must once have offered up iced glass bottles of Coke-a-Cola to travelers; motels with dead neon signs; dead-end signs where the road has given up its conquest of The Great American West altogether. Meanwhile, you speed along the hurky-jerky interstate at intense speeds, passing bigrigs on the left, the “endless broken white line,” missing out on the bluest sky, the mesas, the cattle, the fields, the smell of the earth. The Robert Franks, the Jack Kerouacs, the Rat Packs, the Hunter S.’s – they had it right. Convertibles, transistor radios, wind in the face, cowboys, Route 66. None of the Interstate bullshit. No Triple A. Traveling as an activity, as a pastime, not an inconvenience, a frustration. So there you are, going fast and getting somewhere, but knowing that you must be missing out on so much, seeing remnants of a better time out the passenger-side window. Maybe not even a better time. Just a better time to travel.

Just after crossing over into Arizona, I headed off the road to this Navajo trading center:

Invariably, these outposts are tourist traps that manage to play up and upon the naïve traveler’s grand Native American fantasy: red men and women still living off the land, sewing blankets and moccasins, poor guys, drunk on firewater and tied to revenue of the almighty roulette wheel. Mostly I think the goods were all imported from Mexico, including the two blankets I purchased for $5 each and the baby moccasins I picked up for Sydney. Regardless, it felt like a memory was being made. Like it will be a place I’ll stop again and again, however many times I happen to be traveling through Arizona on I-40. Places like that can belong to me secretly. Not really mine, but a place that no one else I know knows about, so sorta mine in a sense that’s pointless and who really cares anyway except that it makes traveling more interesting and more personal. Look for the plastic animal scene up in the rocks (buffalo, eagle, deer, bear, roar!) and turn off. Navajoland!

Rain clouds had spurted up here and there, but the sky was bright and blue and – thankfully – cool. The rains had brought mild temperatures. None of the Tucson 117 degree bullshit, and Arizona became more attractive and amiable in my eyes. And then the Painted Desert.

A young femme back home had mentioned that I just had to visit the old Painted Desert if I was planning on driving through Arizona. And, really, who am I to disagree with a young femme about anything? Besides, she’s arty and hip and as much as I despise this type of young human, I’m pretty much one of them and so that’s that. There’s a little exit off the interstate and, much like White Sands National Monument, after paying your park fee, you drive around a 25 mile loop and pull off where you see fit. My first stop was here, at Kachina Point, for obvious reasons:

If there is any chance of me getting out on my feet and out into "The Wilderness Area" on my own, I take it. The sign warned of rattlers and wild animals and reminded that there are no trails, no humans, no rangers, no nothing but me and nature for many hundreds of square miles. The trail head was simply that: a starting point for endlessness. I scurried down the dirt incline and past a small German family who realized the vastness was too much for them, ha!, heartless bastards, and my feet soon sunk into the clay of the mesas and soft white rock of the badlands floor. Endless is, I guess, the best word. I got about three or four hundred yards from the trail head and realized that I was, generally speaking, fucked. Basically, as I’m sure the Germans quickly found, the Arizona badlands and mesas and desert sound like this:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Snakes galore. I wandered a bit here and there and saw snake hole after snake hole, heard rattler after rattler, and figured that even with a full day’s worth of water and a change of clothes, this was, for all intents and purposes, a bad idea. I imagined rattler teeth and venom and a slow, sunburnt death on the cracked floor of the Painted Desert and National Petrified Forest. As before at White Sands, nature was quick in defeating me, my suburban sensibilities, my desire to explore, and after a few pictures like this:

I headed back.

The park is huge and striking. Artifacts from ancient natives. Dried riverbeds and active washes. Thunder clouds. Rains. Petrified forests. Unseen cougars and lynxes and coyotes, but just knowing they are there is fun. And, again, endless:

There’s something magnetic about not knowing where the land goes. Something like Lewis and Clarke must have felt, been propelled by. Curiosity to know, to pin down, to become a regular, a local, to have nicknames for rock formations and giant petrified wood clumps. The overwhelming sense that there is far too much to see. The unknowability of this vast plane of land that’s right there in front of you, but that you know will never be of you, in your head. Always a mystery.

There was, of course, some disappointment. Too many people. Trailers and campers and pictures. Not enough foot-accessible trails. Repetition. A mesa is a mesa is a mesa. Stuff like that. But it was six hours of my life that, while perhaps not changing me forever, definitely intrigued me and defeated me and humbled me.

I’ll be back to conquer soon. I just need a companion who’ll suck out the poison before it sets in to paralyze.

The Boy Bandit King

2006-07-29T01:55:00.000-07:00

Let’s see if I can do it from memory: Snake Eagle Cove to Spillman Ranch Loop to FM 620 to 183 to 67 to 84 which becomes 20 for a while before turning off and heading back onto 84 and past Anton and Muleshoe, near Earth but not quite through it, zoom past Farwell and the border and slow down past all the stragglers in red sweatsuits and the huge retired fighter plane in Clovis and by this time it’s 60 or 84, your pick really, cause it says both for a long long time, until finally you see some signs for Fort Sumner. This is the exciting part because it’s getting dark and there have been thunderclouds on and off and it’s only the Michelin brand windshield wiper purchased way back in Sweetwater that is responsible for sporadically saving your ass – and, by the way, they sell you one blade at a time, dumbshit…next time try buying TWO – and since the sun is beginning to head over the edge of the earth, which makes all the night eyes of deer and armadillos and other potential car-wreckers, it’s time to either concede defeat and shlepp over to the very next motel you come across OR continue until…

Billy The Kid’s grave! There it is! Fort Sumner arrived just as I was trying to scheme and plot my journey through the evils of America’s vast and very-underestimated rural outback. The one-lane highways of the United States Roadway System are some of the most glorious roads to travel upon, but only during the day. Come nightfall, critters come out. Critters mean more of the Route 290 bullshit from Texas, and that shit just isn’t allowed anymore. I’ve now repeatedly learned that knuckles do, in fact, turn white in certain high-stress situations. Pupils dilate. I know what high-beams are for. At various moments tonight, though, they weren’t enough and I wanted heat-sensing infrared goggles so that I could at least see the size and shape of the buck I was about to hit before he was mangled and plastered to my windshield. I seriously hate night driving now.

Anyway, I’m not explaining this linearly and that’s probably annoying. Point is: I left Austin at about 11 a.m. and headed out with the goal of getting to Billy The Kid’s grave in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Mapquest said it was a ten-hour drive which, at this point in my motoring career, is like a warm-up lap. The roads were beautiful and clouds were all over the place so it stayed cool and the windows were down, this time blowing tepid air instead of hairdryer air. About Sweetwater, I realized that my five-year-old windshield wipers weren’t going to cut it if I was going to be heading anywhere near the billion-acre storm that was on the horizon, so I stopped off, filled up, and headed into the mecca of all small-town killers, WalMart. God, what a horrible place. Henry Rollins’ latest stand-up thing on IFC had a hefty portion devoted to this monstrosity of a corporation, and he was dead-on. The fluorescent lights are so bright that they reset your internal clock over and over again so you forget what time it is, how long you’ve been in the place, and start looking for provisions that will allow your body the proper nourishment to stay-on in the store. This particular WalMart even had a full-scale grocery store and pharmacy under its roof. It took me a good fifteen minutes to find the wipers and then I picked out some fuses just in case it gets hot again and then some gum and by the time I got back out the storm had moved off.

I spent a good portion of the next few hours listening to Patsy Cline and Neko Case in an attempt to rid my brains of the refrain of some adolescent kid in the WalMart, his hands full of candy bars, flat-tiring his younger brother with a gleeful call of, “You're such a faggot, faggot. You are a faggot! You are a faggot! Ha ha ha.” It’s now thirteen hours later and the words are still bouncing happily about my head. Hooray for the southwest backwoods!

Anyway, I did the drive and it was getting late at a certain point and I was on one of those one-lane highways (as I said, either 84 or 60, you take your pick) and I was nervous and then Billy The Kid sprouted up out of nowhere. There’s a little brown sign off to the side of the road and it points south and out into the fields you go.

It said two miles, but it was definitely more, and I got a little turned around because the signage dropped off and I figured maybe I had missed the grave on the side of the road or something, so I turned around next to some horses, and then got dirty looks from a kid about my age with a whispy attempt at a moustache and an Oldsmobile with the back window shot out and scenes from Deliverance shot through my head, even though I’ve never seen that movie and I can’t stand John Voigt, and I turned around a few more times, saw a large dirty lake with picnic tables, felt scared, and finally stumbled upon the grave. It’s located in the back of a museum/shop thing that was long-since closed by the time I got there (about 8 p.m.) in the center of a courtyard with a few other graves scattered about. But it’s easy to tell which grave belongs to The Boy Bandit King because it’s enclosed in a large metal cage.

Kind of tacky, but necessary: the tombstone has been stolen twice in the past hundred years and, truthfully, without it, the city of Fort Sumner will quickly disappear off the face of the planet like so many other cities I hurried past earlier in the day. The southwest has a way of eating off its vestigial cities rather quickly, and the wonderful crew at the aforementioned WalMart corporation have become superb catalysts. So, the cage is understandable and easy to deal with and porous enough to allow for ample spookiness and authentic I-just-saw-Billy-The-Kid’s-grave vibes. It was awesome.

No one else was around cause it was so late, so I did some touristy photo-op stuff without feeling the pinch of embarrassment. Proof:

And then I was on my way, racing the fading sun, trying to find I-40 so that I could have some lights and company out there in the dark, but I somehow missed the point where 84 and 60 split and became their own entities, and I stayed on 60. This was cool because I saw the Pecos River up close, but not cool because it meant 70 miles to Vaughn and then asking the nice woman at the gas station how to get to I-40 and being told 45 more miles to Clines and then follow the signs. Nighttime, deer, no other cars, chitter-chatter teeth. But no accidents. And a sense of great accomplishment when I-40 finally popped up, and an even greater sense of accomplishment when Albuquerque was only 70 more miles away. 845 miles after getting started, I opted for the EconoLodge because there was high-speed internet and it was $40 and in I went, Carl’s Jr. and all, and now get ready to face the Painted Desert of Arizona upon the morrow.

Al

ANGER, redux

2006-07-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am watching endless amounts of Fox Soccer Channel and catching up on all of the Wayne Rooney temper tantrums of the past year.

I am driving the Ford Ranger through sultry nights in Downtown Austin, watching The Black Heart Procession at The Parish by my lonesome with lots of large-breasted women-folk and hip-looking men-folk milling about, sucking on small straws full of whiskey sours, etc, and trying not to hit deer. Don't hit deer, I tell myself. Hitting deer means a broken Ford Ranger, I tell myself. A broken Ford Ranger means an angry father roused from the comfortable confines of 2 a.m. high thread count sheets. Don't hit the deer.

I am hoping that we (DANGERS) can manage to sell 300 records or compact discs at $10 a pop. Can it be done? We shall see. That being said, updated with some MP3's and whatnot: http://www.wearedangers.com

Back to Old Tratford,

Al

ANGER

2006-07-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

The new record is coming out. It is called "ANGER". In total, I am spending about $3500 to put it out. 1000 CD's and 500 LP's. A week-long tour in August to try and get the things sold. It shall be accomplished. Some songs should be up soon. It took a month to record, mostly because my voice kept going out. My mother always wonders why the screaming, especially now since I listen to Neko Case and Cat Power more than I do any "screamy" music. I guess it's just that I am actually pissed about most things that go on in life, that I haven't gone through my tank of upset just yet. Until then, it feels most natural to let it out with a scream. Anyway, the cover, with artwork by an old Grand View Gator named Danny Heidner:

Rhinos are strange animals. They look like dinosaurs. Not even just a little bit. I mean, if someone back at the natural history museum decided to draw a Triceratops to look like a rhino, you wouldn't think twice. You'd go, "Oh, what a strange looking dinosaur!" But since the Triceratops is what it is and the rhino lives on earth with us amidst Frank Gehry architecture and Scion automobiles, we can see one on the television or in a coloring book and go, "Hrmph, just another boring rhino." But, NO! Rhinos are crazy animals. They look like a strange amalgam of pig and hippo and dino and aggro-pissed-offedness. Also, they charge very violently when they feel threatened. Thus their inclusion on our cover. Angry, angry rhino.

Also, we wanted something simple and graphic. Also, we did all the art in about seven hours. We should plan things out more. We won't ever plan things out more.

I'll let you know where you can get the record when I myself know.

Al

White Sands National Monument

2006-07-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

With the Ford Ranger rejuvenated, it was time for the Southwest.

I left the South Bay at around 11 a.m. and chose to go the Vista Del Mar route because it felt more appropriate. Maybe more romantic. More John Fante. Something about moving from the Pacific to the middle of the country in one day and having seen all of that with my own eyes. Something like that. I figure one day I’ll try to see the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf all in one day. If I surfed, I’d say I’d surf all of them. The sharks in Corpus Cristi would probably eat me.

I got out on the 10 and near those huge windmills out in Palm Springs there was a huge fire up in the hills and soon thereafter I came to realize that my air conditioner was not in functioning order. My skin was crinkling. Sweat from every pore. I tried to put my mind somewhere else but the hot air just kept sweeping in through the window and I had to turn off. I pulled into a Flying J with all the trucks so that I could be alone-ish and not have to look like my car broke down. There’s something embarrassing about standing near a car with the hood up. So I flipped in a bunch of different fuses into slot 18 of my fuse box and each time I switched the AC on I could hear them pop. So I figured, “Fuck it,” and kept moving on into the desert. But it was hot. Really hot. So I pulled off a few miles down at another gas station and went in and bought some fuses. There were people inside the gas station that looked like they lived there. Signs for “extended stay amenities” and an old cowboy sleeping in the hard plastic seats of the Wendy’s portion of the shop. Alas. I put the fuse in and it didn’t blow, but neither did the cold air. A stalemate. I drove on.

I passed Blythe and thought of Paulson Metzger. It could have happened.

I stopped in Phoenix near 6 p.m. because I was hot still and the water I had brought was already the temperature of steaming tea. I drove through and followed signs to the Arts District. It was either that or the Downtown District. That seemed like tall buildings and closed stores. Hippies are better than that. Thus Arts District. Subway seemed like the cleanest thing I could put in my body, so, after giving a dollar in change to a man on meth, I got a BMT and two large tubs of Coke and brought in my Arizona/New Mexico Tour Book produced by the AAA company. There wasn’t a good map, and most of the “sites” seemed a bit too far off the beaten path for me to enjoy. But White Sands National Monument was only seventy miles off the 10 and it sounded like a scene from that Doors movie so that was it. I left and headed for Las Cruces. It was 117 degrees out.

The night drive was a pleasant 80 degrees and the moon rose red and huge and it was so different out in the pitch black that I thought it might be the infamous The Thing that I kept seeing signs for. I think I had the Hot Snakes blaring.

A night at the Las Cruces, New Mexico Motel 6. A pod shower. A smoking room with a used ashtray. Bad television. My head throbbing from all the caffeine buzzing about my veins. That sense that things never change much in Las Cruces. A depressing, stable, wonderful feeling.

So the next day was the dunes and they rose out of the desert between hills and mesas and mountains on the 70, just northeast of Las Cruces. White Sands National Monument is seventeen square miles of white quartz dunes, situated in land that is also used for missile testing by the United States government. Sometimes there are park closures while missiles fly overhead. Debris and fuel and scraps litter the ground here and there. So I paid my $3 to the nice woman at the gates and headed in on the road that winds through the middle of the sands. They rise slowly, pure white, at first crammed full of desert plants and cactus shrubs, but then just white sand, rising taller and taller, until you feel like you are in Big Bear and there might be a cabin popping up sometime soon. Imagine snow. But not cold. Not wet. That’s the white sand dunes of New Mexico.

I took the road to the end and parked my car.

I got out and headed for the Alkali Flat trail. I didn’t read the signs. There was an old couple lurking near the information booth and I didn’t want to get engulfed in a long conversation. Or a small conversation. Straight to the dunes in my checkered Vans. Pictures were taken. I climbed up and down these dunes and everything was white. Like some crazy dreamland where everything was made of powdered sugar.

The sun was overhead. I had no water. About a mile into the trail I realized that it was much longer than I imagined. The map I got at the gate made it look like small hike. It was not. The sun was straight overhead and there were no shadows and my eyes were starting to fail and I reached a point where I thought I might pass out and not be found for a day or so.

I gave up near this mountain and headed back.

The information at the booth said the hike was 4.7 miles long and intended for serious hikers only. I need to get serious. The rest of that hike will be seen.

Another time, I guess.

Al

In Medias Res

2006-07-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

Another foray into the electronic age. Which begs the question: am I, too, one of the sad, misguided folks that chooses to pretend that some other person will get pleasure from reading my little musings? Why not just be content with the private, sporadic journaling? Why offer this up to the anybodies? Hmm.

Truth: I really like the layout. It looks pretty shnazzy. I was allured. I have given in.

Also: you can attach pictures here very easily, which is pretty cool. Like this one:

That was my mortal foe for nearly three weeks. Rollie's evil microphone.

Anyway, this will make for a quick way to file back through my goings-on.

Like:

the new record ("ANGER") is done
the Ford Ranger is almost out of the shop
Texas is around the corner
Amir and I ate potato tacos in San Pedro
Valley Drive is no longer a one-way street
Italy won the 2006 World Cup
No, father, there is still no Monday Night Soccer

Presto! This way I can scroll back through my life from anywhere. The marvels of the modern age.

Also, my mother will enjoy reading this.

And, lastly: Doogie Howser was an early inspiration. I just need that squeeky Neil Patrick Harris voice to drop in over my shoulder and the fantasy will be complete.

Alas,
Al