Rock N' Roll Suicide

I've started a small band and I'm doing a four week intensive in Anthropology and College Algebra, so I've been away a while. I'm attending my fifth college right now.

A year after I graduated highschool I moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music, dropped out a year and a half later, moved back to Wisconsin, went to For His Glory Bible College for a year and a half, dropped out and got married. Then I moved to New York, went to Dowling College to study business, moved to California, and now I'm taking Gen Ed's at Santiago Canyon College (it's in a beautiful canyon surrounded by mountains) to transfer to Chapman University next year for Music Composition with a film emphasis.

At first I was nervous about being 27 in classes full of 19 year-olds, but there are some geezers in my class, so it's cool.

So today being one of my first "days off" in a while decided to squander it on the Internet. So far I've read three wikihow articles on how to clean mineral deposits out of your shower head ( soak it in a pot full of simmering -but not boiling - vinegar), how to clean a shower liner, how to get the mold smell out of a front load washer and dryer. I'm not really interested in how to do these things, I just kept clicking the links.

After a while I started searching arts & entertainment hows and found myself editing how to articles that sound like they were written by foreigners. Then I got a little creative with it. I had clicked on How to Form a Band - wikiHow out of curiosity because I've done it so many different ways, I wanted to know how others went about it. Towards then end I saw two naive steps in the process, "get signed by a label," and "get ready for stardom." I quickly deleted the first one and replaced the last one with this:

# Get famous, take up a debilitating drug and/or alcohol habit, lose the sense of who you are/were, go in and out of rehab, remarry a few times, quell the inner band fighting by throwing your mic at the drummer during his self-indulgent drum solo and flip off the audience while exiting the stage, get plowed in your trailer (extra points for overdosing), if the band confronts you with an intervention, go get your samurai sword that you picked up on your Japan tour and start swinging), break up the band, release a lackluster solo album, drop out of the public eye while your former glory is forgotten to the next two generations and your music goes out of fashion, spiral into a cycle of depression and substance abuse, alienating yourself from friends and family, walk onto the set of MTV's TRL and make a spectacle of yourself (this can also be done at any televised awards ceremony pre-show parties), enjoy a little bit of embarrassing notoriety (at least they'll know your name again), drop out of sight for ten or more years, sell your hit songs to commercials selling cars, mayonnaise, and feminine deodorant, sober up, find religion, make amends with your past and your band mates, do what is known in the industry as "staying relevant" by doing cameos on the Simpsons, playing a judge in Zoolander, or performing a show with Britney (if you are Britney, try a spot on Saturday Night Live, its the platform for stars who have fallen from grace and need to make good with the public by mocking their infamous behavior i.e. Winona Ryder and countless other scandal-ridden stars),plan a reunion tour, charge upwards of $150 a ticket, sell out shows worldwide, cancel shows due to drug/alcohol relapse, get your stuff together and keep rocking well into your sixties, remarry to someone younger and hotter, lather, rinse, and repeat, hang out to dry. A tangential version of this would be to find religion that doesn't allow music or the excess of stardom, release an album of watered down versions of your greatest songs with MOR world music beats and instruments.

I guess you get a bit jaded after reading about all your heroes and what happens to them. The above list contains similarities to stories of many of my favorites including David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Sting and Police, Cat Stevens, David Lee Roth, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and some of my non-favorites (Courtney Love)

The sword incident happened to me when my band mates and I intervened on our coke addled lead singer the night after he lost had our equipment trucked for being parked at bus stop in front of the strip club where he got drunk and subsequently botched our gig, forgetting lyrics to his songs and verbally berating the band and the audience. I'll spare you the story of the legal battles, I'm too busy wasting time on you tube now.

Start Wearing Purple

I was working on a draft of another blog post but it lacked necesary pictures so I'm just posting to hear myself speak.

I've been MIA lately. Etsy has kept me quite busy, as have songwriting and my plans to go to film school, more about that later.

Just wanted to say, I haven't been excited about new music in a long while, but the new Beck single Chemical trails...woah...new direction. love it. can't wait for the album.

New Coldplay: they've completely redeemed themselves with some help from Brian Eno. Parachutes is and was my favorite album, there may be a new contender.

That was a short list. I guess I'm still not that into anything thats come out recently. I'm gonna punch my face in if I have to hear Katie Perry one more time. Either that or staple my tongue to a sandwhich. actually, that might not be all that bad once the pain subsides.

Besides that, it's been heavy doses of Talking Heads "Covered with Daisies" and "Road to Nowhere" I learned to play "Burning Down the House on ukelele." I've got to figure out a way to get some mp3's on this blog...but I'm too busy.

If you haven't seen the Bat for Lashes video for "what's a girl to do," youtube it now. Creepy cool. Animal heads, ghosts, balloons, bicycle stunts, a flipped over car with huge fangs, all in a dark forest. Its got everything a music video should have. Old news for some, but too brilliant not to pass along.

By the way, if you're in a funk and you need lift this song will work every time: Start Wearing Purple. You may recognize Gogol from the film Everything is Illuminated with Elijah Wood (see top image).

and here's a little something from King Missile inspired by my recent job hunt.

Baby Daddy

We need to find a baby to show off our new line of baby clothes! My wife wants a baby yesterday (and my parents and in-laws are chomping at the bit for grandchitlins), but even if we have one in nine months from now, it's not gonna be fast enough to show off our new baby line.

here's what we have to offer so far:

If you know anyone with some babies just lying around and they aren't using them or anything, lemme know. Remember people, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."

If they are using the babies, great, then they need to be wearing our clothes.

Etsy Gift Guide for Dads and Dudes

I have been perusing the Etsy Father's Day Treasuries and Etsy Finds like a hawk trying to find something cool for my Dad, but have been coming up short. I don't want to get him something that will get tossed in the "junk drawer" when I'm not looking. I don't know how to put it politely, but most Dad's don't actually want you to knit, crochet, or weave them anything, even if it is to be used for drinking, fishing, hunting, or belching contests.

I must admit, I'm not the typical "guy," I dislike fishing, hunting, and sports- especially golf. I don't drink much at all these days, and I'm not all that into shoot 'em up 'splosion films, though I do watch them (especially if they have Super/Spider/X-/Iron Man in the title) . I don't know or care much about cars, though I've learned to fix them out of necessity. I never really got into tools until my Dad bought me one for my birthday. It rules, I use it all the time, but just because I like my tools, it doesn't mean I want to display it on my shirt/tie/wallet/belt (unless it is an actual toolbelt-still please don't decorate a tool belt as a gift). Nonetheless, just being a guy makes me qualified enough to say, "hey, here's some stuff dad/guys might like."

That said, here's my attempt at an Etsy gift guide for Dads and Dudes.

With this first item, I have to eat my words about displaying tools on my belt, I would wear this belt buckle proudly:



These belt buckles are not only stylish, they're well made with quality hardware and its only $30. Kali Mellus' shop, ByKali has several more that I'd also like.

And if you're gonna get a guy something made of wood, or something practical yet whimsical: try this:

This is the Coming and Going Bull Trophy Holdall by LuxfordSt. yeah, it's cool.

I'm a huge fan of functional art, especially lamp art. Here's a spraypaint can lamp by bblock:

Here's an apron that won't emasculate your Dad when he BBQ's: Its called "Chef Chop" and its available in Juror 2's shop.

Duct tape wallets and other handmade wallets are cool, but Dad might want something he won't be embarassed to pull out at the bank. How's bout this here money clip made by Garnish Home ?


Dad's love sweets, so if you can't bake, why not let someone else?


I saw this pile of cookies and startied gnawing on my laptop screen. My laptop doesn't taste anywhere near as good as these Double Chocolate Coffee Macadamia Nut cookies by Groovy Cookies.
Now all you need is a Father's Day card like this one at Kindred Knits and your all set.

Father's Day Fodder

Dad's Day is approaching, which always sucks for me because I live on the far side of the country from him, and have for many years, because I have bounced from Boston to Brooklyn, and now to Orange County. It also sucks beacause I can never think of anything good enough to get him that he doesn't already have. Practical is not always best, since he can go out and get whatever tools he needs and he'll know better which brands and types. Dad's don't want a damn tie either! They like toys and gadgets.

I have bought my dad toy and model airplanes, helicopters, kites, an mp3 player, an mp3 site subscription, an audiobook subscription, but the best was when I built him a spud gun. How do you top an illegal potato-launching firearm? I'm not sure you can, and he already has a wicked 6 foot long, industrial rubber-grade water baloon launcher (and he sure as hell ain't launching balloons with it either-try eggs, tomatoes, golfballs, apples, and the occasional jar of pickles).

Like myself, my Dad's also a drummer, but he already has an electric drumset and an awesome Pearl kit. I've bought him Zildjian gear, videos, etc. so thats out.

My parents both lift weights and work out, but we've already bought them (or they've bought themselves) every flash in the pan workout gadget you can think of: Stairmaster, Thighmaster, Abmaster, even Slide Aerobics (remember that one? it was supposed to simulate rollerblading, nowadays you wouldn't be caught dead actually rollerblading).

Unfortunately, etsy wasn't much help either. I don't know how many guys actually wear cuff links that aren't sizing you up for a tuxedo in the mall. Belts, ties, wallets! Are men really so dull? no. this can't be.

Well for what it's worth, Amy took some shots of pops in one of our shirts, we're going to list them in the Father's Day Treasury.

well, I'm off to go make some new stuff for our shop, there will be some new designs trickling into our store this month, even stuff for babies. Babies love to shop.

Mini Mini

Lets preface this blog by saying I never liked chihuahua's. They shiver and yelp, and I figured that if you sneeze on one, they would just shatter into tiny pieces. Then one day while driving by a camp ground in the Redwood Forest in California, my wife's grandmother saw what I thought was a tiny fawn or baby fox. We pulled over and Nana got out and scooped up a scared 2-4 week old chihuahua into her arms, and we were on our way. Long story short, we were unable to get her back to her owner and the camp's ranger said that the people looking for it had already moved on and didn't leave a phone number, but we could drop her off at the ranger station, but they'd just put her in a pound. We called the number on her tag but the phone was disconnected. Her dog tag read "Minnie."

On the car ride back to Nana's, we wrapped the shivering dog in a towel and after a short while I found myself holding the sleeping puppy while Chelbie did her best to coax me into keeping her. Chelbie had been wanting to get a dog for a long time now, but I was against it. I love dogs, but I didn't feel like walking, feeding, and cleaning up after anything but myself and I was worried a dog would eat one of my guitars or something.

My resistance was quickly broken, this dog was just too damn cute, and to make it worse she kept following me. On top of that she turns out to be highly social with people, children, and other animals. She hardly ever barks, she is the best dog I've ever had. Chihuahua's are very loyal, as it turns out, and have favorites. I guess I'm her favorite. Say it with me now, "awwwww." okay, shutup. Oh yah, we changed her name from Minnie to Mini cuz she is tiny.

That was almost 3 years ago. Today we finally had her spayed, which had us nervous for her, like she was our kid. I'm going to go pick her up from the vet after this blog is finished. Here are some Mini pictures:

My sister made her this rad dress (shown in the first picture above) for Christmas two years ago I need to get better pictures of it, cuz that just doesn't do it justice.

And in other news, we finally got props from etsy administrator Iheartmoustaches for our Mustache Man shirt. Though we didn't make the top ten etsy mustache items, we are in the Storque Article. okay, I have to get back to work I have so many shirts left to make and send out.

Here's a little somthing for the mustache fans out there

I smell bacon!

cops and robbers

as hinted at at my sister's blog (click here to see it, bologna face), we are up to no good once again. It will involve both of our combined talents (and I'll do even do a little musical compostion), and its coming to a youtube near you. The above picture is all I can show for now.

I'm considering going into film scoring, I mean I've always wanted to do it, but I never actually got serious about it. At my myspace page I have a few instrumentals (most of which are builders, so they don't really climax until the final 3rd of the song), and even a chase sequence peice for an imaginary chase scene for a suspense thriller.

I also did this peice that could be a slow motion funeral scene. Which reminds me. The best funeral sequence w/ music I have ever seen was (here comes the inner geek, shining forth) the 100th episode of Smallville, Johnathan Kent's funeral http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsAMckYFm7Q What makes it great is the pacing, the camera work, the snow instead of the cliche' reain, and best of all, they used Peter Gabriel's "I Grieve," which is another slow breathing and building song. That was the Zenith of the show and it has pretty sucked ever after.

ok, I have serious work to do. I've taken on my first music student in 2 years, and that means I'm brushing up on guitar scales and riffs. Secondly, I need to find a silkscreen supply store in O.C. so I can get a big enough squeegee to screen the "tree girl" image much cleaner. Third, I have finish my t-shirt tags so I can tag and ship some of our shirts off to Still Life Clothing, a shop in San Francisco that is going to sell some of our shirts.

-okaybye-

ok, I'm back from the coolest art supply store. Everything was as much as $6 cheaper than NY and I got a cool Critter Splitter for under $4. I got the orange monster below, he's awesome, but I'd really like the headband wearing, boombox toting duck in the back or the "kinda rare" yeti. You can mix and match their bodies and heads as shown in the other picture.

off the topic, I just changed my Facebook region from NYC to O.C. and was saddened to see the following after I hit "submit"

Orange County, CA
You have no friends in Orange County, CA.

thanks facebook! You were adopted. There how does that feel? jerk.

jerkface.

jerkfacebook.