BECAUSE I GOT HIGH
Not that anyone would have told you, but I've continued having this choking head cold for going on almost a week now. My brain feels like it's been padded with cotton for safe shipping, and my sinuses have enough internal pressure that I'm considering deep sea diving sans wetsuit as a new hobby. (I hear Long Island Sound is especially chunky this time of year. Mmmm.)

Not that I'm complaining. Oh, great goodness, no. Quite the contrary. Aside from the occasional flaming need to detach my head from my body, I've not had this much rest in a very long time. Days and days at a time have passed like the fever dreams they were, me drifting to and from consciousness like I was dying of exposure, except I was in my darkened apartment, lying under eighty-three pounds of blankets, rigor mortis-still, waiting for the fever to break, which it has yet to as of this writing. Granted, the rest I've got, much-needed as it's been, has been forced upon me, and nothing is worse than having to take a sick day from work when one is actually sick, but screw it, the golden road of the glorious future flays out in front of me like the carpet between the limo and the velvet rope.

No, I'm not getting laid these days. But I am ripped on antihistamines. Which is nice.

I know the big angry world is passing me by, but that ain't nothing new; it's a shitty week to be outdoors anyway. I hear the snow is coming back, and all I have in me to do is get to work so I can feel this bad and get paid for it. Pop your C's and chug that 'tussin if you got it, my most excellent friend; the winter ain't over yet, least around these parts.

PENDING APPROVAL BY ATTORNEY GENERAL

This Oregon car ad (3MB mpg file) shows a utopian world, a transportational ideal toward which we might all be striving. A fable against road rage and a fierce metaphorical blow for peace in our time, the best part is the final exchange of glances between monkey and driver at the very end of the piece.

WATCHING PAINT DRY
Spent the weekend on my back, sick as a cruise ship passenger, unable to sit up or do anything but answer the occasional phone call and watch (sometimes merely listen to) BBC on the teevee. They were having a marathon of the interior design show Changing Rooms this weekend. It's a lovely show, mostly because it's blatantly obvious that everyone on the show will be thrilled when the tape stops rolling and they can go home. Especially stringing the shows together and watching them back-to-back, all the regulars (some of whom clearly enjoy actually doing the show itself, especially that floppy-haired guy) do spot-on cutting impersonations of the others and the snark flows freely in the streets.

The first three hours of it were lovely. I doubt I shall ever want to see this show again.

BAR B IZ ON
I suppose it might be a good idea to bring you up to date on how last night's show went. It went pretty well, despite my best efforts to stop the rock.

I got there about an hour and a half early to the strains of some hippie dude singing humorous-sounding songs about his mid-life crisis. I say they sounded cute, because the new PA system they claimed to have installed was, um, still the old one. It sounded like -- well, you know when you're holding someone's head under water and they're yelling at you to let them up because they're choking and drowning and stuff?

Me neither, but I would imagine it would sound a lot like this PA, minus the bubblybubbly of the air escaping, of course. Of course.

Not that the guy couldn't be heard. It was fine, but his acoustic guitar and solo voice were enough to overload the system. I made a note of this, and resolved to play really slowly and clearly so that everyone could hear my every last pearl of wisdom as it left my golden throat.

Bar B holds about 25 people, so it didn't take much to fill the place. There were some Finnish Goths playing video games and drinking heavily in the back, and the bar was lined with some old Sidewalk Café buddies and their posses and significant others. Beers were three bucks. All I had to do was tune my axe and bring the rock, and the night would have smoked like, like Bogey in The Maltese Falcon.

Now, when I had gone to Toronto a couple of weeks ago, I had forgotten to take the wire clippers out of my backpack (I use them to clip the ends off my guitar strings so they don’t flay out wildly and poke someone's eye out, I swear, no really), and for some reason they wouldn't let me take them on the plane, so not only did I eventually have to board the plane in my stocking feet (a brand new experience for me), but the otherwise very nice customs agent took my clippers away, and of course I haven't replaced them, because, well, because that would require initiative, and I'm currently saving all my initiative for -- I'll figure that out later.

So I didn't change my strings like I normally do, which meant the guitar was going to sound a little muddier than I'd have wanted, which meant that I was expecting something along the lines of an acoustic version of Black Sabbath for my set.

Despite all of that, it worked out. I gave the Goths some M&M's I had stolen from work, and they were a little rowdy, which goosed the jaded (and I use the word lovingly) East Village People into maybe digging it more than they ordinarily would.

Gawd, I was such a pro. You would have been proud. My playing was fine, but I ended my set with a series of singalongs that worked because (a) they're battle-tested songs, dammit, and (b) everyone was good & wasted by that point in the evening. I sold a few CDs, and didn't kill anyone accidentally. Mission accomplished. See you next time.

SKIING UP 42nd STREET
and other shots of the Great Blizzard of Ought-Three. What with it being a national holiday as well, there hasn't been this little action on the streets since, well, since 9/11 anyways.

I went to work and got paid to stay indoors all day, and now I'm home recording and rehearsing for tomorrow night's gig at Bar B. Come. It'll be warmer tomorrow and I'd love to see you.

MARCH IN FEBRUARY
After going back and forth about whether it was worth the trouble to go, I went to the peace rally, if only to add my bulk to the crowd scenes. I'm glad I did.


I took some pictures, which I've now put up on their own page. It sure felt like we all made our point (at least the one about most Americans not agreeing with Bush neither), and every I saw looked like they were having a lot of fun, even if we never managed to get anywhere near the speeches, and I did get pushed down by a cop and my clothes got ripped (it's true, though the rest of the story is embarrassingly lame, but that's how I'll start my story-turn tonight at the pub).

[Update:]
Here's the gallery of the best dozen or so pictures. All the usual disclaimers about relative lack of skill apply.

[Okay, to clarify, the cop that knocked me over just wasn't paying much attention (though he did have his club raised). And I didn't rip my clothes in any altercation, but rather climbing a light standard to get a better picture. Ripped the inseam of my jeans from crotch to knee. I walked home with my one of my pant legs a-flappin around my shapely gam. I could have made an extra twenty-five bucks, but I figured it was best if I just go home and change.]

THE NEW MUSIC
All the love I still have in my heart seems like it's a million miles away these days, but thanks to my recent little excursion, I now have a big pile of Miles Davis, pretty much Steve Earle's and the Replacements's entire back catalogue, plus a generous mess of old cabaret, zydeco and Cuban records to keep me warm.

I missed this stuff. I know I had to make some hard decisions (I moved myself and all my possessions to New York in an Acura fergawdsake), but -- I left Agharta behind? What was I, high?

No matter. All fixed. I have all weekend to prepare for the show I'm playing next Tuesday. There's big rawk moves to perfect, spandex to slide into, mullets to grow (maybe I'll get a wig).

Ah, who needs a stinky valentine, anyway? (Could you be mine?)

I have an emailer to compose.

THIS RANT IS LONG ENOUGH.
About half the people I know are actually buying duct tape and sheet plastic and canned goods in anticipation of some kind of dirty nucular bomb blast or gas attack of some kind or other. I wish I believed there was a genuine threat, so I could be scared too. I just don't see it. Who developed nuclear weapons this week that didn't have them before? Did we do something specific to piss someone off this week, as opposed to last week? And even if Someone Who Hates America does in fact want to drop a bomb or nerve gas or something in midtown Manhattan, and even if they could get a bomb (or as-yet-unheard of biological thing or whatever) through our clearly now-infallible or at least heightened Code-Orange dragnet and into the middle of New York City, how is duct-taping my door shut going to defend me against that?

The purpose of terrorism is what, exactly? Hm.

And now that everyone's actually full of terror, how exactly have the ever-nebulous terrorists not won?

"THREE MINUTES TO GREAT ABS!"
A story.

I waited tables and tended bar for eight years, many of those in this beer joint across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, the last repository for drunken knuckleheads who didn't manage to get into the mecca of hockey to watch the game on a given Saturday night and had to be content with getting hammered and staring goggle eyed at the big teevees while listening to our completely arbitrary music mix of Falco B-Sides and Blue Rodeo slow-dances. Whatever, people managed to get laid to the stuff, who am I to judge.

So during that time, I got used to the smell of vomit. I got over my sympathy gag reflex, I learned to keep composure when someone was chucking up, at least long enough to get them to the curb so we worker-types wouldn't have to mop up their bile pile, and if we didn't succeed at that bit, I developed a strong enough gut to wield the mop myself when it was necessary.

Anyway, those days ended, what, seven, eight years ago now, and since I've "elevated" myself into a different "class" of "worker" than I was once used to, I no longer have to sully myself with such unseemly unpleasantnesses.

Still. I wear those days proudly, and why not. I worked my way through journalism school cleaning up after those rutting drunkards, god bless 'em. I was one of them myself, in every way. I got just as pissed and pukey and I-hate-this-music-let's-get-outta-here as the next barkeep. I came by my swill-stripes honestly.

I bring this all up because someone launched their lunch today at the office gig, and I found I no longer had the stomach for spew I once did. One teeny whiff of the heaved ho-hos and I could barely keep my legs long enough to get out of the area. All that work in learning to deal with people tossing their tarts, gone, down the drain like so much rented lunch. It was like a language I had lost all fluency in.

And while I probably could at some point pick up my proficiency with people who've pitched their proverbial porridge, I really kind of know that my days of dealing with disgorgement with any diplomacy or dexterity are done.

ORANGE FOR SAFETY
I'll admit that I'm starting to really wonder about how this war business is going to manifest itself, but I'm still vascillating between Must do everything I can and Better for everyone if I do what I do best and just rock out instead. Until I work my end out, and since the UN has covered it up, and because I think it's one of the most amazing paintings I've ever seen, never mind what it's about, and all irony aside, no really... Guernica.

BIRTHING LITTERATURE
A week of downtime is no consolation, especially when I've been working my toches off at work catching up from the 5-day weekend I took. The lack of postings in this space (especially of quality) reflects this reality. All apologies, whether implied and expressed, are definitely heartfelt and real.

I've also been thinking about the book a lot this week. And the record. I'm as sick of these two projects not being done as all the people I've talked shit about them with combined.

More tonight when I get out of work and need a break from writhing.

PAUSE BUTTON
So yes, Toronto was really nice, despite the eversuckyfucky weather and the fact that Kevin Quain spent two whole days ducking me with what he claimed was some kind of horrible illness but deep in my heart I just know was a sense of propriety at the fact that I when I play his songs, they come off about one one-hundredth as cool as when he does them himself, and the fact that Kensington Market closed down on Monday and I couldn't buy more crap than I did (I did get a really cool Misfits bowling shirt, though, which I might model for y'all even though it's kind of yellow, and I am so not a Summer), despite these little things, I had a blast.

I got to commune with a couple of people with whom my communism was substantially overdue. I got out of Manfrickenhattan for a few days, which was nice. I had a spicy thick cross-sliced Toronto street dog from the guy in front of the Horseshoe Tavern, with 800 toppings including five different kinds of onions, and cheese and 4 different HP Sauces alone. I didn't drink as much as I'd like, because my host (and driver and all-around everything) found out she was with child last week, which changed the tone of the weekend if not the actual to-do list. We still got to see Big Rude Jake, though I had been away long enough he (like most of the regulars at the Cameron House) no longer recognized me.

I went through the stuff I had in storage, and threw most of it out. What's left I can come by and pick up in a car and bring back at some other point.

I ate more fine cuisine than maybe any other single weekend ever, come to think of it. Not even in Europe did I eat as much or as well. It was like I had to experience these places while I was here and spending what to me is now a 60 cent dollar. Burgers and steaks and all kinds of excellent stuff.

And then I missed the flight back because of horrible traffic on the 401, and so I got back to New York just in time to turn around and run my sorry ass back out to Mineola to play at the N'awlins Grill, which was really nice. I even played a Kevin Quain song, as much out of spite as anything else. Dave Isaacs was a stellar and gracious host, and he runs a kick ass open mic, especially for being in the middle of downtown Mineola (which doesn't really exist). He had taught his band a couple of my songs, and it was nice to play So The Hell What with a band (even if I had never met them before we stepped onto a stage) and have the hoi polloi of Long Island Music singing along. It felt really, really nice.

Stepping back into the routine today felt like being dunked in a cold bath. I'm not awake yet. A couple of cups of coffee and we'll get back to business.