INFESTATIONS
Here's some pictures from the Antifolk Festival in Tompkins Square Park on Sunday. Page one includes John S Hall (from King Missile), Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend, Laura Hoch, Randi Russo, Jon Berger, Patsy Grace and Julian Grace Revell.

There will be further pages, but I figured I'd let you know that it's there. I'll post little notes when I get more up there. I took a bunch at the antihoot tonight, before I left early.

Anyway, my slot at the festival is tonight (that would be Tuesday Night - if I had my way the day would start at 5:00 am, because if you're still up at 5 then re you can say you've been up all night, and if you have to get up before 5 it's really like getting up yesterday. It's really more logical, in a world where everyone's out doing something at midnight. Anyway, I'm playing Tuesday night, which is tonight, got that? Good, because now I don't) at the Sidewalk at 9:30, so come if you can, hey it's free, and come early, because Barry Bliss, Jordan Corbin, Jon Berger and Kirsten Williams are as amazing in their own ways as Patsy Grace, Grey Revell and Lunchin are in theirs going on afterward.

Yep, I shore seem to find myself in the middle of a big ole songwriter sandwich tomorrow night. An' I'm likin' the meat in that there sandwich ah find myself in.

Euw, it's late. Night.

CELEBRITY
You know, after a few days of not reporting to this space, you'd think I might have something more constructive or interesting to say than this, but well, this does seem kind of odd to me anyway.

I got the new 'N Sync album (I didn't pay for it - Kate did! Ha ha Kate! And really, I only have it because her mainstream-purchase guilt has persuaded her to share the consumer-love with as many people as possible, and I was nearest when she was feeling that guilt the worst), and a couple of things stood out:

1. In a band with no official front man, Justin Timberlake is clearly the star now. Apparently, keeping "Pinky" happy is the best career move yet for any of the ex-Mouseketeers in this particular pile. His Thank Yous go first, and he needs extra-teeny type just to fit them all on to his page. He stands in the center in the Sergeant-Peppery silvery ultraposed cover shot, and in front in the limo shot. This has got to burn JC Chasez's ass. I always figured he was cast as the Posh Spice of the group, the Grate Fransh Luvair who would romance your daughters and then leave town with their boyfriends chained to his heels like the dogs they are. And now, Little Doogie Timberlake is the one in the headlines every day, and Christina Agulera isn't returning JC's calls. Poor fella.

2. Laugh if you want (and you can - I did), but the music itself is pretty good, dude. "Pop" is a nifty single, and there are literally another four or five songs that really, truly don't suck on this record. That's nice. I was told that the ones they didn't write are so much better than the ones they wrote themselves, but really, the producing team (which looks like it was about 14,000 strong) have done a wonderful job of polishing these turds. Bravo, fellas. The Mouse is proud of youse.

3. This, like everything else, has to have been calculated, but if there's any chance that it's not, Joey Fatone is totally my favorite guy of the five. The other four bad-looking dudes in the "band" all thank the lord and quote scripture, and fill the spaces between their paragraphs of cryptic props to whoever played foosball with them in the studio between takes with feel-good psalm passages and pay-it-forwardisms and other similar whocares claptrap, although they all better give right thanks and praise for the kind of good fortune (and just plain big ole fortune) that has fallen into their laps these last few years, but Joey, batting last in the Thanks line (I'm sorry I'm going on about this, but I just find it fascinating), not only keeps god out of it, but actually thanks Paul Reubens and Ron Jeremy (Paul! Reubens! Ron! Jeremy!) for being his role models in handling fame.

Now there, there goes a man with a head on his shoulders. Now, on that particular head is a completely wack 'do, and some kind of self-perpetuating shaving issues, but still, as far as these five go, that there's my boy.

Anyway. Despite all this, they still all look like embryos in muppet costume. But so do all the other pop-flavored product acts, so I can't really single them out for it. Oh hell, yes I can. Freaks.

MY FIRST REAL VIRUS
This is gonna sound stupid, but I swear it's the truth.

For as long as I've been aware that there's been an internet at all, I've been hearing about viruses. I've even received a few, but just the never any of the "famous" ones - not Happy99 or Melissa or Anna Kournikova (or any of those other virii named after evil women), never, not once.

I get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of emails from all over the place every day. But never has anyone (or their machine, or whatever) ever tried to send me one of these evil and ever=pervasive (if you believe the media) suckers. I know they're real - I know people that get multiple copies of them every time a new one comes down the pike. I really feel for those people, and I'm glad to be so neglected.

But part of me feels kind of left out, to be honest. I mean, I've got all the precautions in place: I don't use Outlook (I use Eudora), I've got my Antivirus software, I know better than to open most attachments other people send me in the first place, so it's not like I'm too terribly worried about accidentally taking in a virus in the first place.

But -- nothing. All these real serious scares pass me by, and I was beginning to wonder if the viruses were too good to be soiled with my participation. Maybe they all just looked at my domain, and thought, Nah, why bother.

But today, I finally got sent an email with the Sircam virus. The Antivirus program picked it up and defused it (just like it was supposed to! Wuhoo!), and dropped a little message to me saying it had come and been dealt with.

And all I wanna do is climb the outside of my building and yell, yess! Ah done been INFECTED!

Hey, where y'all going?

Well, because Greg Knauss isn't posting his anymore, I'll post mine:

REJECTED MCSWEENEY'S SUBMISSIONS

Come On.

Let me send you a bad email, baby. Let me make you the kind of greasy three-piece chicken dinner that only your sweet, sweet lips would have the honor of spitting out. Your sink is in need of my exquisite lack of plumbing skills. It would be an honor, no, more than that, a pleasure, to wear the batteries out on your cordless phone making long distance calls to Ghana, to stain your rug with cola products, to rip holes in your sheets with my wild lovemaking, and rip them further when you come home and find me in bed, alone with my lustful thoughts for you and only you, just to show you how I did it the first time.

Let me order you the great pizza of love. Triple anchovies, for the fish represents the bounty of our love. No cheese. There is nothing cheesy about the way I feel, baby. The eggplant and the pineapple illustrate your exotic beauty to me, and the crust shall be thick, like the bond between us, and strong enough to not leak the sultry ocean of hearty tomato sauce in which the rest of the ingredients happily swim.

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that Ace of Base is the ideal musical soundtrack for our passions. Let me show unto you their greatness by playing their Nordic reggae-esque electromusings not only through our dinner and our appropriately intense lovemaking sessions, but all night, that they might serenade our cojoined dreams with their dulcet and sublime syncopations and chord progressions. "I Saw The Sign" shall become our unchained melody. It will open up our eyes. Yes.

I shall spill something on your cat. Nothing that would hurt, though. I am committed to showing you the recondite depths of my feelings, but no animals will be harmed in the process. That is my promise to you, baby.

When we go to the carnival, I will empty my bank account at the gaming tables. I shall throw softballs at the milk bottles until my arm turns blue, in order to win you the biggest prize. I shall elbow the smaller kids out of the way at the Whack-A-Mole table if the eight-foot stuffed wonder chicken might please you. Bumper cars, the log flume ride, that optical-illusion-house place with all the mirrors, whatever joys might dunk your proverbial internal clown. I will furnish you with the proper number of tickets, escort you to the front of the line, push you through the entrance, wait patiently for you at the exit, all this I shall do, and with pleasure. And should I not win anything larger than, say, a Vanilla Ice key chain at the gaming tables while you are freaking out in Harry's Horrible House O'Hellfire, understand that I shall have won that Vanilla Ice key chain for you, you, you, yes, you.

After we leave there, the following week I will perform poorly at my job, in hopes that I might get fired and spend the rest of my days sitting on your couch watching ESPN2, and occasionally CineMax, in wait for you to come home in order to provide you with uninterrupted loving, all night long. I may also listen to your CDs of Dave Matthews and Sade while you are off working hard to support both of us.

And your cat. Oh right. The cat.

And when, thanks to the sheer heat of my desire, or possibly some rewiring error when I improve your light fixtures, your house accidentally burns to the ground, and you sit, huddled and shivering, under a police blanket, drinking Red Cross coffee that I brought to you on my bicycle from what's left of a demolished auto body shop (guess who?) across town, you will know, deep within that fragile, suspicious little heart of yours, that you are there solely because of the profundity of my love for you. And you will remember this love for always and ever, if for once I do it right.

SWEET NOTHING
So this weekend, instead of doing all the things I absolutely had to do that I've been putting off, I did something else I had to do that I've been putting off.

Nothing.

I sat on my big ole butt and watched a little golf on the teevee, made a few to-do lists, went out and walked around in the 90 degree New York summer sun without pad or camera (horrors!), made a little photo gallery of the pics I took for my pal Kelly Sue Deconnick's Birthday last weekend, and called my Dad (because today is his actual birthday, and he deserves birthday wishes all over the place), and, um, that's about it.

I wrote a couple of bluegrass tunes, but no one in New York wants to listen to bluegrass (except for maybe Erica Smith), and they're not great anyway, but considering that was my entire output this weekend, I feel very rested and ready to do some new stuff in the next few weeks.

See you tomorrow.

KISS OFF
So where was I. Oh.

So I'm watching the VH1 Behind The Music's Kiss episode, and I'm sure all of you know their story by now, how Paul was invited to join the Quarrymen because he knew how to play piano and John didn't want to play skiffle all his life, and they went to Hamburg and George lost his virginity and then Please Please Me began to rocket up the charts and ten years and 80 million albums later, their place in history was assured.

Well, okay, substitute Gene for John, Wicked Lester for the Quarrymen, Detroit for Hamburg, and put it 15 years later, and -- well okay, you're still not too close. Never mind.

But I gotta say. Watching Paul and Gene go through an hour of self-mythologizing and blatant historical revisions ultimately made me dislike them even more than before. Sure, the music had its moments, but between Gene's repeated rants about how all they ever wanted to do was rock you, in your town, and how through sheer force of will and against all obstacles they created a movement, a religious groundswell that has enveloped the world in what Rock and Roll is really about made me want to toss my Kiss Cookies all over my studded platform boots and smash every crappy Kiss pinball game (as well as those four stupid spinoff 'solo' records) with a Kiss lunchbox filled with rock, which is the only rock I think of when I think of Kiss now.

Paul Stanley (Stanley Eisen) and Gene Simmons (Eugene Klein) were geeky kids with a decent business sense and a need to get laid, early and often. Gene talked repeatedly about wanting to live the Rock and Roll lifestyle, which meant getting a little trim in every town (or in Peter and Ace's case, getting fucked up a lot).

Kiss has clearly no respect for the music part of the music business, except insofar as they can squeeze a buck from it or screw people because of it. I was just amazed at how little the music itself actually mattered to them. They marketed themselves as a brand, and they got absolutely dirty stinking filthy fucking rich because of it, and the rules of success in the music business have changed because of their kind of success, and the ubiquity of corporate saturation in music is due in no small part to the total unplannable success of their plan 25 years ago, and the world is no better for their having been on it.

Paul and Gene are clearly not in love with music, in any form. They'd have been just as happy going into the used car business or corporate law if that was where the money and the sex was. They're merely into getting what it got them, but that's not the same thing. Kiss is little more than four bitter losers living rich, pampered bitter loser lives.

["Tony, you're just jealous. "]

You are so right.

'MY' NEW YORK
Well, the Smartass site is down (apparently Fark found them, and the guy couldn't handle the huge jump in bandwidth that sudden web-fame brings), which sucks, not because the site was great - actually, I'd recommend Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, a lower-bandwidth (after the opening graphic) and semi-interactive collection of tales taking place around Manhattan. I like the concept of the stories being rooted primarily in place, especially in a large yet finite arena, like the island of Manhattan. The stories are often written by Thomas Beller himself, but there are other contributors, and some of the stories are really human and sweet.

The first time I go to the places talked about in these stories, I'll actually have stories I can relate to them, even if they aren't my own.

DIGEST
I've been told otherwise by people who've looked me in the face, but I've had a great couple of weeks. It's been busy as hell in my life, and all with things that are fun, for the most part. The Wise Sophia play took up a lot of my time, but it was really fun and cool, and I got to spend some time reconnecting with Brian and Brad, as well as my beautiful self-flagellating cabaret queen Helen Stratford, which was really nice. And the play itself went pretty well, I think, especially in the face of all the pratfalls and catastrophes that beset the production in the week leading up to the show.

Sharon Fogarty and Patsy Grace really knocked themselves out making that show work, and I'm glad they did - I'm sure that Shel Silverstein is looking down (or up, depending) on the production, proud of how one of his final collaborations wound up working out.

Then there was the birthday party show on Saturday night. The whole getting-over-catastrophes theme continued, as Aashish's drum kit fell off the stage halfway through my set and a problem with my machine heads meant I couldn't actually tune my guitar. (Fortunately, Tabitha came late and missed all this, but Kate bore witness, as did Two-Blog Peter and Two-Blog Jon, just back from Brazil and looking tanned and buff despite drinking heavily (and not his usual Bailey's and milk neither, but manly drinks, hair on your back type drinks, beer, harder stuff too, arrr!), eating poorly, getting way too little exercise, and oh right, losing his job.

Bad living clearly becomes Jon Berger. It was real nice to see him do his utterly unique dancing to Lunchin and the Hellers, both of whom rocked the full house for Al's birthday. It was like everything was okay with the world again. Clearly, mass debauchery is a lovely way to live. (Note to self.)

This week is a week of recovery. Not so much because of said excessivenesses, but more that the stress of the last few weeks has got to stop, and so this is the week of prioritizing. I have some hard decisions to make this week. Also, there's some songs to finish (come this Friday [*The Rising, Brooklyn, 10:00*] if you can and let me know if they're any good, because really, my shit detector is notorious for not always working).

LUPO AND THE OFF-WHITE FLAG
For no reason at all, from one of my favorite animated pieces of all time, Danny Antonucci's Lupo the Butcher:

Sonamabitch, bum I KEEL you, fucken I dunno!

Never seen it? You're missing a great piece of cinema, no really. Lupo, cutting sausages in the back room of his butcher shop [sign in front: THIS NO LIBRARY BUY OR GET OUT], accidentally cuts his own finger off, and begins screaming in anguish as blood spurts, Gwar-style, out the open wound.

Augh! Omagahd, I'ma gonna die! Augh! Aaagh!

For no reason, the rest of his arm falls off, then his other arm, then his body falls apart like a puppet suddenly cut loose from its connecting strings.

Aaaaaaaaaaaagh! Agh agh agh omagahda sonamabitcha waaaagh!

The screen fades to black, except for the head, and they cut to the credits. Quickly running out of steam and getting sleepy, Lupo's severed head props itself up with his tongue, and realizing that it can't yell at people propped up awkwardly like that, he falls back over on his side and lets the invective wind down.

Sheet for head! Artsy fartsy... buncha pigs!

ohhhh. I quit...

That's enough. No mas. It's been lovely, but really, that's it. I can't take it no more. I quit. You can take this, I'm done with it. There's nothing left. The well, she is dry. This isn't going to work out anymore. I wish there was a better way to leave things. Finally, a brief quiet spell avant le suivant deluge, and dammit, I'm gonna take advantage. No, I'm not interested, you goddamned sheet-for-head, and take me off your call list. I'm never doing that again. I really just need a break, but not from this, or this, or this. Enough fun. I'm funned out. Manana, and manana, I promise, ah cha cha cha.

MISTA ETHEL, YOU WAS MY INITIAL INSPIRATION
Good news - Steven Baum is staying in Texas.

Although I've never met him and only know him through his writing, I'm happy for this news; it means the chances might be better that I'll have the opportunity to keep reading his weblog. Although I'm not sure who the eponymous Ethel may be, I do know that it was reading Steven's ramblings and occasionally utterly opinionated treatises on politics, literature, cooking, media studies, serious investigative reports and whatever else crossed his hair-fine radar that convinced me, more than anyone else I'd heard of up to that point, to start this page up last September.

He has set a standard for thoughtfulness, ability to hold to principle in the face of overwhelming apathy, and sheer unwavering class to which I continue to aspire, and any lack of change to his routine is thus an overwhelming positive for me, as a reader.

Never mind his actual life, which is of course, as always, a whole nother story, and upon which I have neither ability nor desire to comment.

ANOTHER ONE FOR THE KIDDIES
(Uncommented picture link format stolen from the New Dratfink)

PS - I have no cooties.

THE THEATER OF PANIC: AN INSIDER'S LOOK
Until I can be as Cool von Cool as the clearly-born-to-be stars at Hey Let's Be Cool And Rock!, I'm keeping busy, way too busy perhaps, but still, it beats the alternative.

I had forebodings galore about this play I'm involved in. The Wise Sophia is a play derived from a story written by The Brothers Grimm and Aleksandr Afans'ev, which songwriter (and new mom) Patsy Grace was apparently working on with Shel Silverstein when he died last year. So it was a story with the best of all kiddie pedigree.

And it's a nice story. Two farmers find a golden cup in a field, and can't decide who gets to keep it. They take it to the King, who's greedy and wants the cup for himself. So he gives the farmers three riddles, and whoever solves the riddles gets the cup. He figures the farmers are idiots, and he'll be able to trick them out of their prize. But one of them has a wise and beautiful daughter who knows more than anyone...

But (but!) the production has been beset by problems, sicknesses, and an atmosphere that "King" Brad Thomas (of Fragile Male Ego) described tonight as "The Theater of Panic." The puppets that were going to make up the puppetry part of the show were left in a cab a few weeks ago, and with no time to replace or remake them, the play was rewritten to make the actors themselves the puppets. And then yesterday, the leading lady leaves the production under suspicious circumstances.

Sounds like a recipe for total theatrical disaster, yes?

Well, turns out it's a recipe for total theatrical diaster, no. Opening night was tonight, and not only were people actually in the audience (by no means a sure thing on opening night - I've not seen a well-attended opening night in this town yet for some reason), but the play, by some inexplicable miracle, has come together into a coherent whole.

It's actually pretty good. It's funny and silly and certainly great for kids, although there weren't any in the audience tonight. It was fun to be a part of. Stressful as hell, but way fun. Everyone's good in it, the band is good (I'm in the band, but they're good anyway), the costumes are cute as hell, and now that we've got it down, there's a real chance I'll enjoy the next few days.

Come join me, if you'd like. I'd like.

ACCIDENTALLY WALKING INTO...
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
The oddest thing happened this morning. (Well, not the oddest thing, but -- bear with me for a second.)

I got into work, the same as always, turned on all the computers, let them boot up and heat up while I went off, eyes still closed, to get some coffee from the rickety old pieceashit coffee machine on the other side of the building (the coffee it makes tastes something like a cross between gasoline and Drano, and half the time it doesn't work at all, and the dispenser system is so archaic and primitive it'd make Fred fricken Flintstone impatient for something more up to date, but it is free and whatever it does spit out is pretty strong, so it serves its purpose okay I guess), and I bring my half a cup (it only made that much, and I didn't feel like examining the intricate and arcane workings of the inside of the machine, so half a cup it was) and I come back and realize:

I don't need coffee to function. In fact, I don't even want it today.

So I let the half-cup sit there and get cold while I start work, and everything's cool. Broken from the cycle of addiction by something other than choice (I sometimes go a day or two without coffee, but I get all drowsy and stuff and really, I like myself better on caffeine, all other things being equal, which of course they very rarely are), I fly through the inbox of stuff which accumulated over the weekend as quickly as ever, and thus inspired, I was going to sit here and write about my mini-epiphany, and I started writing and I couldn't make complete sentences, in fact everything looked a lot like the posts of last week, all screwy and semi-coherent and some sentences were missing verbs and really, it was a horrifying mess, more like the actual inside of my head than anybody, present company definitely included, needs to know.

So I downed the now-cold half-cup in one-shot, and going back to the machine I grabbed my normal morning suckerpunch, and came back and hence I present this stellar piece of writhing you now hold under your mouse (or trackball or palm-stylus or whatever, what am I, psychic over here?).

Good to know I can do this job in my sleep. Good also to know that if I want to make complete sentences, I have to be, like, awake. That's comforting.

You know, mundane as it may sound, still. Every day and in every way, something something something.

STOP... DON'T ... STOP ... DON'T STOP
Propriety and modesty forbid me from commenting too much on what John and Amber have mentioned about our little set-to last week, except to say that I thought I was the one that was honored by their presence. I mean, I've played a lot of shows in front of a lot of people, but I don't believe I've heard of someone traveling 2500 miles to see me play. (Yet, dude, yet.) And John came all the way from Jersey. That's like a whole nother country, eh?

Pride, on the other hand, compels me to trumpet their amazing multi-part laudings. I am so unworthy of such unmitigated praise, especially from two people whose selflessness, wit, class and commitment to detail I so admire.

Amber's world tour continues with a trip to Oregon to meet Brooke, and maybe I'll convince John to come back down Saturday Night?

Come on down - I'll be in the shiny black shirt in the corner, Brooklyn Lager in one hand and flogging my CD's (or taking purty pitchers) in the other.

Maybe a real, actual, planned, organized weblogger summit is in order. Once upon a time, I thought I was the only East Villager with one of these things. First, I met and made friends with Tab. Then Kate started hers. There's the soon-to-be-unemployed Jon Berger's. My housemate Peter even has a weblog now, fergawdsake. Perhaps some kind of Blogstock or something could be worked out. (And can I copyright that name?)

MY BIG, BEAUTIFUL, THROBBING TO-DO LIST
I am so late for rehearsal.

This has been a week of sorting out priorities, of taking the things that are there and good in my life and figuring out which ones stay and which go.

Everything seems expendable. No, that's not the right word. I'm sure there's a word for when you're improving your lot and everyone you work with is either going to improve with you or they're not going to last. But in a compassionate way. (Yes, today I am the Josef Mengele of love.)

Sorry. This has not been a good week for making sense. (The grammar issues in that last post are hopefully uncharacteristic and rare. No editing, much as I cringe when I read that thing.) A few months ago, when I was at my low point, with no job, debts piling up, the songs not coming, entire days would come and go and -- nothing. Now, it seems the bus has truly lurched out of the rut, and all those goals I set for myself when I first moved to New York a year and a half ago seem possible again.

But right now I am so late for rehearsal, and I was hoping to debut another song for the show next Saturday (10:00 at Sidewalk again, for Al's birthday), but apparently the trains are screwed and no one else is at Sanjay's house neither.

While I'm free-associating here, I'm wondering: What do y'all think of an accordion in a rock and roll band? I like them, but I've arranged for them before, and when done properly they're not only a horn section & organ all in one, but that little bit of polka/zydeco they add to the sound is something I think would make things better.

Sounds like I've decided, eh? Well then. Unless someone is totally anti-squeezebox, and you can convince me, I'm going to start sending out feelers.

So yeah, thanks for hearing me out.

THE AVENUE A LIST SUMMIT, WEBLOG EDITION
I was going to tell you all about my fourth of July (I spent it mostly in a recording studio and on the phone, until way, way after I probably should have), but my dog ate the post I wrote (actually, I left it at work) and really, I still didn't feel very, what, patriotic I guess.

So yeah, I felt bad not talking about the show last weekend, but I wasn't sure what the deal was with those two, whether it was okay to mention something or not. Now that the stories are starting to come out (Amber, sweetheart, you are not helping with my Capricorn-bred messiah complex, I just gotta say), and although I'm not going to turn this into a game of Rashomon-by-weblog, I will say that it was a lovely surprise (and despite what either one of them say, it was a surprise) to have them there, and that Amber and John (and Kate, and some others. I kept thinking, if Tab and Jon were here, I could pretend I was Mickey Rourke in Barfly and start buying rounds and yelling, "To all my FRIEEENNNNDSSS...") took in the show and it was lovely to have them there, even though the sound was terrible, as it often is at Sidewalk, especially these days, for some reason. (A whole bunch of new sound people? New equipment that hasn't been properly calibrated and broken in yet? Our band was real loud, maybe too loud for the room, even when it was kinda full.)

I had a camera, but it seemed like a bad idea to take pictures for some reason. But I can vouch for that all this really happened.

John is as classy a guy as I've met in a hell of a long time. Amber was energetic and alive (and, okay, yeah, stunning), and all three of my bandmates pulled me aside and asked me, "Who's she?" which was a little creepy because, really, aside from giving them a link, what's a guy to do? So I told them the truth, about the amulet and and how her behind-the-scenes work helped bring a lasting peace to the Balkans, and the electric car and the AIDS cure, and suitably impressed, they ordered more booze.

(I'm doing a terrible job of describing the scene. Problem is, I don't know if I want to. The whole blow-by-blowing of last Friday gets in a lot of ways a little closer to the why-am-I-doing-this-weblog question than I really care to address right now, tonight, when the temperature in this apartment is still three hundred and twenty eight degrees, recent rainstorms be damned, and while it was definitely way fun and a little surreal, and it was amazingly great to meet two people who have become a regular part of my daily life and introduce them to some of my friends, I don't know how much I'd be able to add to the stories it seems like they're both telling so very well.)

I was expecting us all to be a lot more bitchy than we were, for some reason. But instead of talking about online stuff, we talked about our lives. All of us, the four bloggistes as well as the other scene rats and Very Close Personal Friends who wandered downstairs while we drank and discussed and riffed on each other's yakking and drank a little more, before wandering off into the lovely steamy night.

MY POINT IS
I am of two minds today.

I'm two insane people away from having a happy productive life. I'm two good meals away from getting nice & fat.

I'm two stupid boygadgets away from cutting my midlife crisis off at the knees. I'm two juicy secrets away from full transparent disclosure. I'm two minutes away from biting someone's head off. Maybe these next two minutes.

I'm two deep breaths away from zen. I'm two shallow breaths away from inspiration. I'm two epiphanies away from enlightenment. I'm two songs away from having the next album written. I'm two cards short of a full deck. I'm two coherent concepts away from actually getting my point across. I'm two broken hands away from a forced vacation from everything. I'm two degrees of separation from the Dalai Lama. (Okay, three, tops.)

I'm two steps from the open window in my office. (But I'm only on the second floor, and the window doesn't open. Also I'm not really suicidal or anything. But still.)

I'm two good paychecks away from looking into buying property. I'm two good nights' sleep away from peace. I'm two heartbeats away from being truly centered. I'm two records away from having the best record collection on earth. I'm two solid months of writing away from my first good book.

I am two days from oblivion. I'm two days from Valhalla. Same two days, I bet.

MY LATENT TIME FETISH
John Lee Hooker. Chet Atkins. Joe Henderson. Jack Lemmon. Carroll O'Connor. Anthony Quinn. Imogene Coca, ferchrissake. And more, always more.

There's something about the cascade of passings when I think about them all at once like this that really moves me somehow. All these people at least did something that was tangible and memorable. They moved the world forward a little bit. And these were merely some of the ones that made the news.

I know I return to this theme quite a bit, in my songs and in this log. Perhaps it's something about the whole concept of the Great Scorer calling up your name and seeing what you actually made of your life that I find fascinating. Certainly I've always been a little bit obsessed with doing something bigger than I am, to push the water in a positive and constructive direction and have the wave continue after I've sunk to the bottom of the lake. (Y'know, outliving yourself. Or if you will, immortality.)

That's got to be why I'm truly interested in people that have, in various ways and to varying degrees, managed to do exactly that.

Or maybe I'm just a time fetishist.

But regardless, I think of these people, and the people I know and love personally, and I wonder if I've done everything I can do in this world. And I think of all the new people that have been born this last month, and what they're going to do to advance humanity in their own ways. And for a moment, just a fleeting second, I think: maybe, just maybe, the human race isn't doomed to a swift, brutal extinction after all.