SURVIVOR: SOAP OR SOCIO-PORN?
To say that the whole to-do and ta-da about the new Survivor series is about eight hundred steps beyond overhyped is as obvious and self-evident as saying the success of (oh, let's just pick one) 'N Sync might not be commensurate with their actual talent level, but everyone I know is watching it, just like everyone watched the Super Bowl before it (I didn't, for two reasons: one, if I have a football team I feel an allegiance to at all it's the Toronto Argonauts, and no one here cares and really why would they, and two, I was actually on stage at the Sidewalk, doing improv sketch comedy in a room where we almost outnumbered the audience. It was kind of fun, actually).

But we all choose our soap operas, and we all have them, all of us, whether it's the WWF or beltway politics or gansta rap or the weblog community or the plants growing in our garden or the personal lives of our friends or whatever. And I'm sure there's an upside to having something like the machiavellian as-the-stomach-turns of Survivor providing a little seminar on the vagaries of the darker side of human nature on our screens every night or so.

Still, I won't be watching. Not because I don't have cable (I don't), and not because I'm immune to such sillinesses (I was really into Big Brother for a while there, which in retrospect may have been some kind of harbinger for my mini-breakdown that followed this last few weeks), but because it's fixed already, and anything they put on the TV show is skewed and mixed up with whatever crappy plot devices the producers decide to put in, which is not a cardinal sin in and of itself but does remove it from the vaguely socially pornographic domain of "Reality Television."

So I'm comfortable skipping the whole show-phenomenon, but let me know how it goes, okay?

PROOF I'M NOT MAKING ANYTHING NEW UP, THAT ALL OF EVERYTHING ON THESE PAGES HAS BEEN ALREADY THOUGHT OF AND EXPRESSED BETTER SOMEWHERE ELSE, MORE SUCCINCTLY, WITH BETTER WIT AND INSIGHT, AND THAT'S OKAY, NO REALLY, I'M HAPPY TO AMPLIFY OTHER PEOPLE'S TAKES ON THINGS I THINK OF AS A MATTER OF COURSE, AND I SAY THIS WITHOUT IRONY OR MALICE (1ST IN A SERIES)
Evil Twin Theory!

ALMOST FAMOUS
So tonight was the first time I actually got called out in public because of this weblog. And it happened not once, not twice, not three times, not -- well, okay, three times. But ... three times! In one night! I mean, really.

Dad-to-be Grey Revell (who played an excellent show to a raucous audience that knew all his material even better than he did) mentioned from the stage that he reads this site fairly regularly. God bless him, but I suspect when his little howler finally arrives (Patsy is about 7 weeks from her due date), he'll have way more pressing matters to address. (It was actually one of those nights. I heard Butch Ross' band for the first time and they were real tight and straight, Lach looked like he was actually enjoying himself on stage, the Voyces were sweet and melodic as ever, and um, I didn't catch Joe Bendik's set, though I would have if I had any ears left.)

But after Grey's set, two other people came by and mentioned they read it. One of them, Jen Curtis, I knew, hadn't seen in a few months, and was delighted at being able to actually say yo to. (Yo!) The other one I didn't even know. He approached me, mumbling some compliments that what little propriety I have left at this late hour forbids me to repeat.

I think it's really cool that there's online weblog scene people and offline songwriter artsie scene people who have read this page. One of the cool upsides (as I see it) of actually publishing one of these damned things is to bring a little piece of your world to someone else so they can see what the hell's going on somewhere other than the inside of their own butt. I've learned so much about the nursing profession from Alwin, about Hong Kong culture from Randy, about New Orleans food and basic wisdom from Chuck, and -- well, a whole lot of amazing political, social and musical minutiae from Steven. Not to mention learning a thing or two about class from damn near everyone on that list on the side.

(Not to mention a huge dose of what it takes to transfer emotional strength to and from your friends (y'know, like, love) from Kaycee. Of course.)

(And again, reload this page and all the above examples will be replaced with other, equally rich and varied links to other worlds that rock just as much.)

The list of sites over there will probably continue to change and grow as I do, but in the meantime, don't be afraid to explore some of the stuff you haven't seen. Go meet someone you haven't met before. See, the way I see it, if it weren't for exploring, I'd be dead now, and so would you.

ROOM FOR ONE MORE ON THE WAGON?
This link has appeared in a lot of different places recently, and I believe this might be the last weblog on Earth to actually go check it out, but maybe I should have gone sooner.

See, Clara has set up a server that will give you your true name, based on your personalized criteria (okay, it only asks what gender you are). But it's extremely scientific. And accurate too. Proof of its painstaking exactitude shows through in that my "true name" is

Shakespearean Emperor

I didn't realize it was so ... obvious. (He laughed, coquettishly.) I suppose there's nowhere to go from here, well except I suppose Disneyland.

(PS - The second time I ran it, my name came out as Audible Aphid. Yeah, I know, I know. Draw conclusions at your own risk, though.)

WARREN ZEVON
I was eight years old when my parents split. It was a welcome development at the time, seeing as they were fighting constantly, and well, you just know when it's time, I guess.

Anyway. One thing both of them did was immerse themselves in music to deal with the change. My mother went to her Eagles records, with a ferocity that has led to my no longer being able to listen to them, even to this day, without cringing. (The guys in my band know this, and will often goad me into playing Desperado in public just to watch me squirm. If I had any willpower at all, and clearly I don't, I'd spring some Depeche Mode covers on them mid-set or something. But wait, that would torture me too. Damn. I'll have to work on that.)

My dad, while also an Eaglehead (what are fanatical Eagles fans called, anyway?), chose to go to the Beatles, John Prine, and Warren Zevon.

The Beatles need no explanation. John Prine, because he had a little 3/4 size Goya guitar and he used to love playing John's tunes when his pals came over (one of the cool things about my childhood - Dad used to get stoned with his friends and play "Sam Stone" and "Hello In There" and the one about blowing up yer teevee and he'd sprinkle some James Taylor and Jim Croce in there. I actually loved that), plus those tunes are cathartically depressing in that gee-someone's-got-it-worse-than-me kind of way.

Zevon I have no idea about, except maybe that his gleeful evilness fit my Dad's mood real well at the time. He had a copy of Excitable Boy he played into the ground. Maybe he played it specifically for me, because I remember loving everything on that record from the get go: the twisted frankness of songs like "Roland the Headless Thomson Gunner" and the title track, the sweetness of "Veracruz" and even "Accidentally Like A Martyr" (although what that means is a bit beyond me).

And of course, when you're ten years old, singing "send lawyers, guns and money, the shit has hit the fan" has a bit of an illicit thrill.

I still love that record, and many of the ones that have followed it, and even though in recent years he's become a bit of a credibility-monger-in-residence for the Letterman crowd, his songcraft and ability to tell a story remain unsullied, at least to me. He had a major influence on my development as a songwriter, for sure, and today... it's his birthday.

STOCK TICKER
So I got back from two complete, total, unexpected, blissful days on my back, with nothing further to disturb me (well, okay, nothing that wasn't in my head to start with, and the boiling roiling contents of the addled kvetchy grey mush up there took the full two days to start oozing out the holes in my head even so), and a couple of interesting developments (well, they're interesting to me, screw it) have developed...

1. I took a gig designing a website yesterday. Because, yeah, check out the great designer dude's home site ovah heah, with the powder blue and the pigs on his page, I'm an esthetic freakin' genius. Step aside, y'all, the rock and roll doctor is here to cure your webby woogie flu. (Sheesh. Look at this place. It's a mess. And now I'm supposed to build someone else's site? I guess I'm pretty much done making excuses here. Evil Twin Redesign is now officially pending. I now have a back burner free.)

2. Speaking of flus, mine was finally relegated to the unpleasant-memory bin this morning. I haven't been sick for more than a week since I was a kid, far as I can remember (no, wait, I did have Chicken pox, like, ten years ago, which laid me up for a while. But -- see, I don't get sick. I'm a very impatient patient. I could learn if I had to, I guess, but I have constructed my life to ensure maximum selfishness, and why change years of self-spoilage over something as solvable as La Malaise du Saison?

3. I've now gone a week without writing anything further for the book, and to my absolute shock, I feel pretty much okay with that. I'm realizing that I'm going to wind up writing (I'm guessing) 1200-1500 pages of text, and that's going to take more time than I have. So (*sigh*) I'm going to re-enter the workforce. The illness helped make this decision. I will continue working on the book, for sure, but I also have a small shopping list of things that would help immeasurably. I need a couple of pieces of recording equipment, I have a small debt to repay, I'd like to travel a bit, and I figure time off work is easier to get than travel expenses.

When I first moved to New York, I had a two year plan for working for someone else before I assessed what I was doing for branching out on my own. The way I see it, I have one year left on that plan, and really, everything has been going according to schedule.

So I figure, by Spring of aught-two, I'll reassess where everything is and how much longer (if at all) I should be working. I have a year to get on my feet, with the band and the writing and whatnot.

Hey. Thanks for listening to an old fart ramble. I better have grandkids, or else all this here's-how-it-is and let-me-tell-you-something is going to go down the crapper. (Give me back my teeth, you scoundrel! I'll show you the back of my hand!)

A SORT OF QUALIFIER
I guess it might have been listening to the commentators using phrases like dawn of a new era and a return to moral integrity and other similarly non-partisan claptrap all morning which got me to snapping a little and firing off the screed below.

Not that that's not what I feel, but I've been insulated and gracious for a bit too long. And it wasn't like the departing regime was any great shakes in the ethics department neither. (Why did Bill Clinton, in his final act as President, pardon his brother and Susan Macdougal, and not Leonard Peltier? Just as the most recent in a long line of f'rinstances.)

See, my biggest despair about how the election turned out was not that the conservative geek lost to the right-wing wacko, but rather that in an election which, in the months leading up to November 7th, was building toward the thrilling civics lesson about Every Vote Counting, it was made very clear that Every Vote Doesn't Count. We were told, in essence, that our opinion means shit.

And I'm not talking about the Gore-won-the-total-popular-vote thing. I happen to really like the concept of the Electoral College, and would fight to keep it in place.

I'm talking about the fact that ultimately no one on either side really cared if all the votes in Florida got counted. The immediate pressure on Gore to concede (just 'cause) never abated. And once Bush's handlers managed to get a grip on the media outlets, and thus popular opinion, they took the election away before the whole mess was properly sorted out. All the arguments I've heard about chads and time limits and Supreme Court whatnot sound suspiciously like copouts.

Truth is, many votes - for Bush and Gore - were not counted. People who actually took the trouble to vote were told, through the Florida legislature's (and the Florida Supreme Court's, and oh yeah, the other Supreme Court's) actions of the ensuing six weeks, that their opinion did not matter. So instead of a great exercise that would have brought more voters to the polls, into the electoral process, next time, instead voter turnout is only going to go down in four years. I mean, why bother, right? Third party, First Party, First-and-a-half Party, who cares who you like or even if you actually bother? Clearly not the candidates, or the interests to which they owe their livelihoods.

If I was running the current administration, I would take steps to bridge that credibility gap, and soon. Otherwise, the stench of this episode is going to follow W. until he tries to run again in '04. (Which is why I'm not running the current administration.)

This is not sour grapes. I was never crazy about Gore neither. But what's been exposed here, to even the most naive, is the openly corrupt nature of American politics (40% of us don't think this was a legitimately settled election; among blacks it's six in seven), and that credibility gap is only going to widen unless a dramatic and meaningful gesture is made.

And among all the rhetoric spouted these last few weeks, it doesn't sound like such a gesture is forthcoming. Which is why I'm so damned frustrated.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS
So my plan this morning was to actually listen to the Inauguration on the radio for the first time. It's an important event in the passing history of the country (not to mention my first one as a resident), so I figured I'd give it a shot. But I couldn't. I just couldn't.

I turned it off after Dick Cheney doddered through his, and at the moment George laid his adolescent coke-addled shaky little lizard hand on the same red Bible George Washington used when George the First swore to uphold the then-hallowed office two hundred and some years ago and repeated the oath that all lying cheating jackasses (and, very occasionally, honest guys) repeat at the beginning of their terms of service, I was back in my bunker, listening to a decade-old recording of Bill Hicks on full blast, laying unmercifully into his old man (and his cronies, pretty much all of whom are still here).

This is no new era. Don't let anyone tell you different. The Reagan years are back, and the rich are going to get richer and the poorer are going to get poorer, and we as a country and as a people are going to get meaner, to the rest of the world and to each other, and I'm accepting that this is happening, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

More on the moron as the scandals start a-coming. And they will. They always do. And of course, without eternal vigilance, there's no hope at all. But today, I feel like crawling into a bottle of something and hiding for a few years.

MAKING SENSE OF A SCREWY NIGHT
(I've been taking a bit of a break from Evil Twinning for a little while. I've been thinking too much about thinking too much, and that's part of why I've been sick and uncentered (I think). The book-writing's been going a bit south too. It's time to get my head back in order. It may be after the weekend before I post again. Then again, I might write something an hour from now. I don't know.)

I will never be thanked for what I did last night.

I'm not looking for thanks or praise, really. I'd do it again, for sure, a thousand times if necessary, even if every time I got the same cold what the hell are you doing reception I got tonight.

I'm not one to cry sexism at the drop of a hat, really, I swear, even though I am aware of the differences between the genders. They're different than the standup comedians and the self-help-hucksters and the shitcoms would have you believe. Far as I can tell.

But the job I had to do tonight was real dirty, on a night where I was coming out of a week-long illness, and wanted to blow off some steam.

No, I didn't do anything terrible. Quite the opposite. My fault lies in being too principled. Does that sound holier than thou? Fine. I don't care.

I went out with two female friends, both in from out of town for the night, and both got hit on, real hard, by married men. Coke addicts. Relentless assholes. And they led these losers on, my friends did.

My job (such as it was) was to make sure they didn't get into trouble, and that they got home in one piece. And they were hell-bent on trouble happening.

I did everything I could. Short of calling the cops. And my friends put me in a very difficult position, over and over again, all night. They knew what my job was - they gave it to me in the first place. (And I accepted it, willingly.) And still.

All I wanted to do was dance. It had been so long since I got some exercise, I'd been cooped up in my little cell, sitting at this chair I'm sitting at right now, so long since I actually did something to get my heart rate moving, even yesterday when I was on stage I was going as slow as I could because of this stupid flu that lingers even now, like an odor, like a guilty memory.

So when I woke up yesterday morning and the fever had broke, and the phone rang and these people asked if I wanted to go dancing, I thought it was a fantastic idea. I didn't realize I signed on to be a babysitter.

Stupid me. I thought we were equals. All grownups, all out for what I thought was the same kind of good time. Some dancing, a few drinks, inhale some fog-machine smoke and get our eardrums blasted by some second-rate techno, you know, a basic night out.

It was like my friends enjoyed watching me squirm. But these coked-up assholes are the reason women hate men. I was watching it happen, right in front of me. More casualties in another pointless sexual civil war.

I know nice people exist, and they somehow find a way to survive and perpetuate - they manage to stay true to themselves in an impure world, to keep the possibility that we'll get past this small-mindedness alive, to find each other. But there's so many assholes pissing in the pool, polluting our collective world view, that this atmosphere of hate and fear overrides everything that leads us back to the one real universal truth.

Which is: Quit fighting each other. Quit trying to dominate the people around you, or even the one you want to spend time with. Quit submitting to the first person to stand up and thump their chest and claim to know what's best for everyone else. Stop beating yourself, and each other, up. Just for a moment.

And then listen to the peace that fills that void. Feel it. It's there, it's real, it's between the beats in a great rock and roll song, it's in the crook of someone's arm when they really want you to put your hand there, it's in the easy laughter of a bad joke told too late in an overlit diner, it's when all agree that the party's over at about the same time and everyone exchanges phone numbers or emails or spit or come or political viewpoints or whatever, it's leaning on someone only when they can support you, it's looking out for your friends and them looking out for you, it's listening when a truly uncool situation develops and figuring out a way out of it before it gets dangerous, it's the mutually tangible and palpable joy of being able to maintain harmony for a few precious glorious moments at a time in a world that encourages and rewards discord and confrontation.

I lost track of that peace tonight. There's nowhere to lay blame, and it will never get discussed among my friends (if they even knew or cared about my discomfort), but I have to remember that that peace exists, and my purpose in life, the reason I write and work and get out of bed every day and keep this weblog and make records and break up fights and chaperone my drunken friends for, is to find that particular peace, for however many seconds at a time it can exist before it falls back apart into its component parts.

That peace, in a very real sense, is the higher being I worship, unto which all my glory passes. I need to be reminded of that sometimes.

RENOVATIONS ALL OVER
They're fixing up my beloved hometown bar-slash-nightclub-slash-court-I-sometimes-hold, the Sidewalk Cafe, in all kinds of little ways these days, after years of the place getting more and more divey and rec roomy-looking every damned time I go in there.

Used to be there was all these photocopied posters on the walls advertising shows, and it's a pretty dark and cluttered room in the first place (it was originally a jazz club, like, 50 years ago, when Charlie Parker lived around the corner and this was still the fabled and dangerous Alphabet City). Dead instruments are nailed to the ceilings, old streamers and crud from celebrations long past litter the ceiling like a convention floor turned upside down, the EXIT sign was way too bright, or would have been if not for the even brighter neon signs saying Sidewalk Bar and The Fort directly behind it above the fire door.

The place looked downscale. It was the kind of joint you could wander on in, put your feet up on a table, and shoot the shit with the waitresses until 4am or 7am or noon, and you wouldn't know because it never closes and it's dark in there, all the time.

It was just like home. Except I'd never take my shoes off at the Sidewalk. You seen the floors there?

Anyway, there's a new manager in town (cue Ennio Morricone soundtrack), with some big ideas, and over the last few weeks, little things have started to change. Like, the posters disappeared from the walls. A marquee showbox now sits just outside the main entrance listing all the performers that week, from Saturday to Saturday. There's a lovely red curtain behind the stage. The garden variety nachos-and-bar chow that all us folksingers fattened ourselves on is being replaced by ... something, I'm guessing a bit more upscale. The kitchen is closed all week while they retrain the cooks.

Some people, understandably, are less thrilled than others about these developments. There are going to be a few old-school-style punk rokk antifolkies (and hardcore followers of same, of which there are many) who are going to feel a little less ... comfortable in the space than before. Gentrification is a problem in every town, I know, but to be honest, I don't know if there's anything that can be done, or even if anything, short of some civic engineering, should be done. A city, like a hippo or a language, is a living thing, and it changes and grows and shrinks according to everything that goes on inside it.

Me, I like the way the place is starting to look. It's whaddyacallit, classy and stuff. I got some uptown friends, and I wouldn't mind a few more who might be willing to spare an evening in some slightly swanky little hideout, ifyouknowhatimeanandiknowyoudo.

Besides. Change is generally good. Resisting change is generally bad.

Now, turning that boiled down homily inward for a second... I've come down with (to use a phrase I've heard about a million times, no exaggeration, this month already) The Flu That's Going Around, and I've been cold-sweating and headachy and grouchy and full of all manner of deliria and visions for a couple of days now, and I'd like to think I'll remember these wacked out dreams I've been having (or even be able to have copied them down properly into my notebook), but that's the least of the things inmy head right now. There's only so much ginger tea and homemade stew I can make before I start asking myself other questions.

Like, what the hell is going on with this book? Am I running from something? Am I living some sort of cosmically misaligned life right now? Is my body rebelling against the changes I'm putting it through? Am I going to be able to get used to this new lifestyle, or am I going to need a day gig just to maintain my sanity?

I just never thought I was the need-a-day-job type. I thought this would be a snap. Oh well.

MORE GOOD NEWS
Huzzah, huzzah! I have my grubby little digits on a real Frank Sidebottom CD of his greatest hits! Huzzah!

Okay. Let me explain, starting from something resembling the beginning.

The Freshies are some band I've never heard of, but they did apparently have one little hitlet in England a million years ago (okay, like 1986 or thereabouts), with the lovely title "I'm In Love With The Girl At A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk." (Apparently Virgin wouldn't let them use their name in the song. Shame, that.) So just for kicks, apparently, the leader of this band, a fellow named Chris Sievey, decided to adopt the alter ego Frank Sidebottom, to serve as the Freshies' number one fan. This alter ego wore a huge papier-maché head, had a 18-inch tall cardboard cutout of himself (Little Frank) who would be the constant target of Big Frank's abuse, and they both lived with Frank's mum, who was constantly asking Frank to go shopping for something or other. A big fan of the Manchester City Football Club, he's also the Captain of the Timperley Bigshorts Football Club, which unfortunately has only two members, Big Frank and Little Frank. Three if you count the dog.

Anyway, Frank developed way more of a following than the band, and started appearing on local radio shows around Manchester and putting out an album every two or three months, usually with him playing reworkings of classic rock and roll hits on his preprogrammable Casio keyboard with banjo overdubbings. His tributes to Queen and the Beatles are truly inspired, and one's life cannot truly be considered complete until you've heard his rewriting of the Who's Tommy ("Not, 'Tommy can you hear me,' but rather 'Can you hear me tummy?'") His tributes to Queen and the Beatles are a hoot, and his kazooey voice singing a bouncy-flouncy utterly British Xmas Medley is going to be a staple for the rest of my natural life (or until I marry someone who just can't stand it. You know.)

The apparent high point in Frank's career was when he actually got to play at Wembley Stadium, opening for the pseudo-embryonic twin act Bros, who were apparently big fans.

The first time I heard Frank do his thing, it was on Nightlines, the now-defunct overnight weekend show on CBC Radio. David Wisdom, the host, had no information at all, aside from what the back of the record held. Anyway, when I went to England a couple of months ago (is that all it's been), a couple of people knew who he was, and apparently he's still playing club dates with Little Frank and doing slide shows and putting out records.

Anyway. I now have a copy of ABC&D, his greatest hits album, with something like 84 minutes of music on one CD (he manages this otherwise impossible feat by putting one song in the left channel and another one in the right on a couple of tracks near the end. Quite ingenious, really, unless of course one has no control over your balance control. But that's a detail.)

So I just thought I'd share. And like Frank says at the end of every song, Thank You (or Frank You, or Fuck you, it's hard to tell.)

GOOD NEWS
The severance check came yesterday. Finally.

It's about half of what I expected it to be (more phone calls tomorrow, ain't that the best?), but at least the phone won't be immediately cut off, the rent can be paid for at least another month, and the pantry shelves can be restocked.

And that's about it. But still.

A FABLE OF SOME KIND
I was walking home from a quick stir-craziness-driven excursion to the Sidewalk Cafe to see Joie DBG, and I saw this little scene outside of Coyote Ugly (that's a reference so you know that all the people herein involved had that WB Network-scrubbed ohsoveryfashionable look).

Two guys are walking down one side of the street, in an obvious state of carousal, looking for a cab to get home. One stops at a red light, and one of the guys runs for it and gets in. He doesn't close the door, because he wants the driver to wait for his straggling friend.

From the other side of the street, a woman walks up to the other rear door, flings it open and yells, "Hey asshole, get the fuck out of my cab," and climbs in.

Now both doors are open, there's arguing in the car, and the cab driver's pulling over to the side of the street, waiting for this little drama to play itself out.

The slow-walking friend has not, I believe, processed what has just happened, and continues to amble toward the taxi, continuing to just ... be cool.

After what seems like an eternity (my god, it was at least five or six seconds), both doors of the cab close, with the two combatants in it, and the cab zooms off.

The ambler stops walking and starts yelling, and I think I'm the only one alive that can hear him.

And as he's appealing to the gods to help him out, four more cabs pass him by before he actually develops the presence of mind to stop one.

Well I thought it was funny.

THE CLATTERIN' OF THE IRONY CAN (or A WHITER SHADE OF CLUELESS)
Let me preface everything I'm about to say by saying that while I am asking for no sympathy or even any extra good wishes (I know someone who could really use all the vibes all of you have left over right now - spare an extra thought for Kaycee and her family if you can, okay?), I got a piece of mail today which clattered a little too noisily in the irony can to be ignored. (You know, I hate irony as a literary device -- it's so -- facile. But well, there you go.)

One of the things that's been bringing me down the most about the last couple of months is that I haven't seen any money at all since the week before I got laid off. Now, I've been fine with my savings so far (it was a decent gig, and even with the exorbitant Manhattan lifestyle I've been living I managed to put a little something away), but the pickins is starting to get a bit thin. (Maybe I should have a Blogger-style telethon. Whaddya think?)

(Kidding, I'm kidding.)

After almost two months, I'm still waiting on both a severance check and my last weekly paycheck from my former employer (a major financial institution, as it turns out), and a large part of the draining atmosphere of the last few weeks has come from the fact that the bureaucrats at the other end of the phone have been various shades of clueless about what to do, or the whereabouts or progress of my file. Every once in a while I get an envelope with a photocopy of some form or letter that needed signing or something I sent them a few weeks before. But no checks. Weeks and weeks of angry phone calls and my old HR department chipping in seem to not be doing the process any good. (I am considering getting a lawyer if this drags out much longer.)

This is getting crazy. I'm not starving to death or in danger of losing anything dire right now, but the lack of knowing what the hell is going on is starting to really drag on my psyche. I'm grouchy and irritable. I can think of no one but myself. The big bad moon is shining black lasers out of my butt. It's hard to sit down.

So today I get one of those form cards for my credit card (issued through the old financial institution which employed me, naturally) which says, by way of an ad slogan-slash-tag line:

We don't expect to see another check from you.

Yeah, I know it was for pay-by-phone or online billing or whatever, but still, I couldn't help but think to myself... Oh, that's rich. You already have thousands of my dollars and you're talking about not expecting any more? I'm clearly not holding either side of the stick here.

JUST A QUICK BIRTHDAY SNACK WITH THE LORD
The ingredients of this one present, as received (by mail!) from my pal Mary:

INGREDIENTS: BROWN RICE SYRUP, ORGANIC DRIED FRUIT (FIGS, RAISINS, FIG PASTE), CRISP BROWN RICE, GRAINEX(TM) (WHEAT FLAKES, BARLEY FLAKES, HONEY, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL, BARLEY MALT), ALMOND BUTTER, RAW HONEY, NATURAL FREEZE DRIED FRUIT POWDER, POMEGRANATE CONCENTRATE, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL, SEA SALT.

Now. I'm looking through the Bible, and I don't see anything anywhere in Deuteronomy about Grainex(tm) or freeze dried fruit powder (let alone a recipe, for that matter). Which I can overlook. But why is extra virgin olive oil mentioned twice? They must have used a lot.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS (or THE MILES HOURS)
By the time Elvis Presley was my age, he was more than 3/4 of the way to his demise.

By the time Elvis was my age, he was getting sick of making those transcendently dumb movies, and preparing himself for his comeback special.

By the time Elvis was my age, my mother was going into labor.

I'm reading the post below, and I'm thinking, hell, who needs mushrooms? I'm sleep deprived, my biorhythms are currently roller-coaster shaped, and I'm experiencing visions and making synchronistic connections that would leave Carl Jung in the freaking dust.

Okay. See, here's the deal.

I've been writing real late most nights. Nights are when the writing seems to go best, when the phone ain't ringin' and the world ain't honkin' outside the door, when the only distractions at all are the Miles Davis records I put on for a few hours a night in my headphones while I type with my keyboard on a pillow on my lap because the desk reveberates too much for the housemate. I am loving these Miles Hours. even on the nights I write nothing but crap, even when I write very little.

The Miles Hours are getting later and longer.

Tonight (okay, last night) I hit the wall at about 4:30. When this usually happens, I go to bed or walk around (or post something here if all I need is a change or if something's on my mind, though very little has been on my mind these last weeks), depending. Last night (it's definitely last night now) I went for a walk around the neighborhood. It's been relatively warm here the last day or two, and so what slush remained had hardened and there were little salty black ice patches dotting the neighborhood like reverse-colored mini-golf greens, and the cars slept in their spaces like they'd never be asked to move again. A star or two peeked through the sky ceiling, while a couple of cats chased each other through the rows of trash cans, and I was watching this all with someone else's eyes, and suddenly a lot of things made sense.

I think I know how this book I'm writing is going to end. I'm going to run the risk of rewriting someone else's work, but hey, not like that's never been done before. Hell, let me take the humility pants off here for a second and point out that I'm kind of -- well, not nearly a celebrity, not even close yet, but -- maybe a known entity in this town these days as a songwriter, and with good reason I think, yet I can honestly and almost happily admit that I don't believe I've ever written a truly original song.

(I'd like to thank, oh, Nick Lowe, Chrissie Hynde, Bruce Springsteen, Buddy Holly and the Beatles for giving me a career. Reload this page and five other equally influential and deserving names will come up.)

I never apologized for that, and even though I apologize for everything (a uniquely Canadian trait, I'm told), I don't think I'll even feel compelled to address the originality of what I'm going to write in the next few weeks. It'll be mine, it'll be fine.

There are, however, a couple of books that have inspired me excessively in the past, which I might do good to avoid for the next little while. My perception of the style and flow of these novels is almost definitely different from how they really go, which means that I might yet write something really interesting, y'know, just by chance. (It happens all the time.) (Okay, now I'm putting my humility pants back on.)

I guess I'm not going to sleep today. You know, I'm getting too old for this crap. (Actually, I don't really think that. In fact, aside from the vague sense of foreboding and gentle nausea that comes from these metabolic acrobatics, all-nighters are still kind of fun, especially now that I have no obligations past what I've booked for myself. (Today and tonight, that way, are a bit of a hassle. But whatever.) It is, however, fun to say I'm getting too old for this shit. Ohh, so tired, what am I ever gonna do.)

Time for coffee, I think.

You know, underneath all the starvation and the not-knowing-if-any-of-this-is-relevant-or-worthwhile and the constant guilt-trippy phone messages from the friends I used to spend so much time with saying Hey Tony, where were you last night?, this writing business is pretty fun.

SENTIMENT OF THE WEEK
(Hippy-dippy alert: I wrote the following trying to get to the underlying messages of the novel I'm writing. Writer's block is in the air of this apartment these days, and I've got all the fans on.)

The late (but very, very great) comedian Bill Hicks is one of my ideological heroes, and observations like this are why. I'm not the biggest ingestor of trendy chemical amusement aids (it's been many years since I last did mushrooms), but I've talked to about half a dozen people this week that have had real problems in their life around love and trust, and I figured this would be worth sharing.

You know, I'm glad mushrooms are illegal, because the last time I took them, I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going, My God...

I Love Everything.

The heavens parted, God looked down and rained Gifts of Forgiveness unto my being, healing me on every level, psychically, physically, emotionally, and I realized that our true nature is spirit, not body, that we are eternal beings, and God's love is unconditional and there's nothing we can ever do to change that, it is only our illusion that we are separate from God or that we are alone; in fact, the reality is that we are One with God and that He loves Us.

Now. If that isn't a hazard to this country... you see my point? How are we going to keep building nuclear weapons? What's going to happen to the arms industry when we realize we are all One? It's gonna fuck up the economy! The economy that's fake anyway! Which would be a real bummer, you know.

So you can see why the government's cracking down on the idea of experiencing unconditional love.

In the movie History of the World, Part I, Mel Brooks at one point plays the part of Comicus, a standup philosopher. There ain't terribly many standup philosophers around these days (amid the scads of yuksters hawking their dick jokes and remote control / nylons in the shower schtick), and when Bill died of cancer in '94, we lost an amazing thinker. Sure he was bitter as hell, and he too told at least his share of dick jokes, but that (I think) was to get people to listen to his central message, which was one of openmindedness and peace. (No shit.)

If actually applying these lessons was easy, then not only would everyone be able to coexist in absolute harmony, without need for ultimately trivial little things like governments or borders or R ratings or money, but our blissful, enriched lives would be awful short. You'd learn the central truths of the universe, and apply them however you're meant to apply them, and the next thing you know, you're done. You'd be in the most comfortable place you can imagine, helping to solve what few problems the universe would still have, and then you'd pass gently into the next world (or back into the ether, or transmogrify into a rock or a martian or platypus or whatever) and otherwise solid concepts like time and progress would advance so far up the scale that the terms would cease to have meaning.

Um, not that I think we're anywhere near this point yet, Toto. But deep within me I really believe in that state of being. I know it's achievable, probably not in my lifetime, or yours, but someday, and if I can do something that gets us even this much closer to it, then my life was more than worth the trouble.

RAISE HIGH THY FREAK FLAG!
Oh, my search for Toronto songwriters' websites is starting to bear some fruit. This is a relief, because that web-deficiency just seemed too conspicuous for words.

My most excellent friend Tim Cameron has a site I somehow haven't linked to yet. He's brilliant, and one of the few songwriters I knew from back in what I consider the day, when not only was I beyond help as an aspiring performer, but was desperately, quixotically looking for a mentor, and he filled that bill far better than anyone might have had reason to believe was possible. He's also the moddest guy I know, and he should really put a real album out, with a real power pop band. It would mean I wouldn't have to.

And Johnny Sizzle... well, Johnny's this self-identified geek from Winnipeg who plays "Accoustic Hardcore" [sic] and puts out a zine called Folk Me Faster. You'd think he'd be perfect for the antifolk community here in New York, or anywhere for that matter. Well, he seems to have put himself a lot more in order since the last time I've seen him. (For the strong of constitution, I heartily recommend you download the MP3 for Oh Sexe Poulet, which is about exactly what you'd think it's about, and goes into the kind of graphic detail that makes you very, very happy there's no video.)

Among the other amazing (as in, how do people come up with this, and why am I entertained by it?) people listed on the site is Metallor Montoya, a Mexican Pro Wrestling Folk-Singing Robot (you're wishing you thought of it first, right?) who sings the what I think should be the first NAFTA National Anthem, "Fart And Make Money." And of course there's Nipples "See Ya Later Masterbater (In A While Coprophile)"[sick] Arcola. Of course.

Whew. I feel better knowing about this stuff, I guess.

THE MURPHY GIG *
So I told next to no one about the show last night.

Like, no one. Not even my closest friends, not the people who inexplicably come to most every show (not that this is the time to question their mental states or hearing abilities or anything), not no one.

The band didn't even know about the show until Monday, fergawdsake. This was the Murphy Gig. I gave the world every chance to screw up the evening and make it a horrible mess.

We had originally arranged the evening as a series of solo shows to commemorate my birthday. Kris Sour was supposed to come on and play a bunch of tunes that his band, Janet Vodka, didn't know how to play yet (and the drummer had just been fired and the bass player was in Korea), and then I was supposed to go on and play a few new toons, and then local folk legend (and ex-Beck flatmate) Paleface was to go on after us, doing his growl and scream thing.

But none of us wound up playing solo. The club was under new management, so the old complaints about the noise (which we had always been told were from the neighbors) were allegedly no longer a problem, so all three of us (independent of each other) decided to bring in the bands and see what the room could now take.

Janet Vodka went up first, and although you could hear them in the front room (said room being a bar, with TVs and drunks, packed during the baseball & hockey playoffs), it wasn't as loud as a band as occasionally noisy as they can get might sound. They were fine. They had a new drummer, Ron was back from Korea, people were digging it, what the hell.

We played next, and we sure felt louder than we normally do (at the Sidewalk, anyway) but we played good, and there was a ton of people there, and I have no idea how they heard about the show, but they were into it so hey, there you go.

I feel like I got lucky last night. In the middle of my funk, the band rocked a new house (which I thought was an old house I had outgrown), and that was a really nice little birthday present.

Oh, and Pablo and Tim got me these neato cheapo coffee cups (Geddit? Tony The Tiger? Geddit?) and Mike & Dina got me a sarcastic 8-Ball (typical answers include Who Cares, Not A Chance, Whatever or You Wish). Which was two more presents than I thought I'd get. Or probably deserve.

TWO DECADES BEHIND (AND GAINING)
For the first time in literally months, I'm actually sick right now. I've got some kind of mad headache and a fever and a completely sore throat (the singing on New Year's Eve probably didn't help, what with the stage being right beside the door, and what with the cops coming in three times over the course of the night (and what's with that? Anyone who would complain about the noise at 10:00 on New Year's Eve on Washington Square in New York City is in real need of something (what? A life? A laxative? Something important to focus their angst and whatnot on? Something more basic? (Like maybe a brain?)))), and really I've been quite happy to sit here in the dark and huddle up against everything.

But no, that wouldn't really do. Even suddenly reclusive and hermetic ole me didn't feel right retreating that far into my shell. So instead, I've wandered into my housemate's record collection and discovered, about 20 years after the rest of the world, something I've hated, more or less, up to now. Kate Bush.

(Yes, Kate Bush.)

I started with my Kirsty MacColl albums, which I've now rediscovered for about the 307th time (okay, that actually started before the 31st, because I actually played They Don't Know at the party, and it sounded great, especially with my super-husky pre-headcoldy voice squawking the words out I sounded like Kathleen Turner in really effective drag, but y'know in a good way, thankyouverymuch), but then Peter came home and put on the Kick Inside, instead of the show tunes he normally plays (which I have grown to appreciate as well), and Wuthering Heights came on, and knocked me over.

I feel like the last person to be let in on a joke or something, but damn if that ain't one amazing piece of music. I was never big on romance novels, and I was forced to read the original in Grade 12 (oh, alright, here's another link), although I did like it rather more when I found a copy in a bus station in Salt Lake City and read it to pass the time, but listening to Kate's way-high trill screaming for her Heathcliff to let her in brought me right there shivering under the window with her. The orchestral histrionics which I laughed at for the last twenty years sounded absolutely perfect to my stuffed-up ears. I felt mollified, sated. Good music will do that, if used properly. Then again, nuclear weapons can wipe out life on earth, if used properly.

But -- but I always hated Kate Bush. I must be getting old. Or infantile. Or something. Sure, this has happened before. I was a real latecomer to Billy Bragg and the Pixies and Husker Du, not to mention Jane Austen and Kurosawa. (I gotta admit - Dickens and Radiohead still escape me. But give it another 20 years.)

Whatever. Maybe I should pull out some Depeche Mode albums (or read some old Joyce Carol Oates novels or whatever) and see if I like them now. If by some catastrophe I do, then I oughta give up songwriting I think, because I shall know for sure that my shit detector no longer works.