Praying to Zoroaster

I'd simply like to announce that I just interviewed for an information manager position with the NC state retirement system, and I do hope I get the job. It's entirely creative and problem solving stuff, no dealing with the dreaded media or city councils whatsoever. Pays more than I was making in Texas, to boot.
After six months of unemployment and or/contract work and/or manual labor, I'm actually a bit excited about this. I know I know, the warped ideology of yet another office job. But I DO enjoy the public sector so long as it isn't pointless bureaucracy. It's the social benefit angle, I suppose. I'm not working in order to make one jerk at the top of the pyramid a cash silo of cash for him to feed his cash cows. Cash.
So, for what it's worth, I hope they liked me. That was as nervous as I think I have ever been during an interview. I feel like I talked too much, although I was able to provide good, solid responses to all of their questions, and there wasn't a skill or experience they asked about that I was lacking. I also hit them with three or four good q's of my own at the end (allegedly always a Good Thing). I tried not to talk badly about my last job or the one that never happened, and I know my references will pull through (Monkey dear, I may ask if you could tell them some nice things, since they asked if I had any local, personal refs in addition to my professional ones). So there you go. Interview Number Two in NC, and the first I scored by the sole virtue of my resume and cover letter. Let's hope this trend continues, barring my landing this one.

I could use a nap, although I feel very strongly about watching Ghostbusters. It's comfort food. Must also write about cars for my other gig.
"This man has no dick." Hit 'em again, Venkman!

-Mittens

I gotta know tonite, if you're alone tonite...

I want to retract something I wrote in that last post. Def Leppard was incorrectly categorized as fluffy bullshit. Monkey called me out on it, and having just come back from seeing the band play at Walnut Creek Ampitheatre here in Raleigh, I officially recant. I never meant it in the first place. Winger = fluffy bullshit. Def Leppard = badass second wave British hard rock.

God I do love that band. Hysteria and Animal are possibly my two favorite songs from the 1980s. The production for Gods of War would baffle Queen. Run Riot just rocks. And while I'm sick to death of Pour Some Sugar On Me (primarily as a result of my senior live television production project), the place exploded when they kicked into the chorus. They stayed away from Adrenalize, focusing on the perfection of High and Dry, Pyromania and Hysteria. Fine by me. Rock out with your you know what out. Weenus out.

Phil Collen is such an underrated AND underappreciated guitarist. He's really become the nexus of that band. The orchestration between him and Vivian Campbell was just amazing; Thin Lizzy, Priest, Maiden and Def Leppard did/do the twin guitar thing better than anyone. Love it! Although Joe's voice is failing a bit (just the high range, really), the instruments were spot on. Vocally, the other guys really punched up those classic harmonies, too. And Rick Allen was doing some pretty cool stuff with the drums. My buddy Ken, who's played for more than 20 years now, was commenting on his right hand technique... He would.
Yarp, damn fine rock show. Closed with Rock of Ages. Rock.

I was commenting to another friend, more of a question really - what kind of middle age are we going to have with regard to music? Which bands are we going to go digging through boxes to find that crusty old concert tee for? Most of the bands I followed late in high school or college have busted up or died. If the Pixies get back together when I'm 45 I'll poop a golden wristwatch that tells time in 12 different time zones. Or Pavement. Or Archers of Loaf. No, we're gonna get saddled with motherfucking Candlebox and Creed double-bills.

I also have to add that while I'm not a fan, Styx opened for Leppard and played The Grand Illusion in its entirity. That kinda rocked. Vocally they may be the tightest band I've ever seen (not ever having seen Queen or N'Sync). Four part harmonies throughout. Color me impressed! We did not, however, arrive in time for Foreigner. So much the better. I despise that band. Overplayed on classic rock radio to the point that I spontaneously fart lava and thumbtacks whenever one of their songs begins to play, I just can't tolerate them in the least. I'd rather listen to Toto. OK, I'd listed to Toto anyway. I'd arther listen to Sid Viscious' cover of My Way for an hour while being flicked in the gonads with one of those county fair rubber band guns. I hate Foreigner. Monkey, you defend that band and we're through. Finished. Done.

Instead, tell 'em about the time your mom wouldn't let you go to the Def Leppard concert with your sister. That story officially made me your friend.

-Mittens

Inner Revolution (with obnoxious comments from Monkey in italics)

As promised, I'm writing a few on the Adrian Belew gig last week (finally). I first became aware of the guy when my dad brought home what was the second McKinnon family compact disc (the first being Led Zeppelin IV)(Your dad was some sort of early technology adopter. My dad didn't even have a microwave until well into the 21st century). Paul Simon's Graceland. (My dad's copy was on vinyl, which made the liner notes easy to read.) I consider this one of the most important records in the development of my musical appreciation. I seem to recall The Joshua Tree and Graceland being the records that flipped the switch in my noggin which made me realize the difference between actual quality and fluffy bullshit. I still appreciate fluffy bullshit of course (we're seeing Def Leppard tomorrow, front row center thanks to a hookup with the radio station)(excuse me but I think you just referred to Def Leppard as fluffy bullshit. My inner twelve year old is flipping you the bird), but those two records in particular caused me to realize pop music had real artistic value. I started digging into my dad's Beatles, Who and Kinks records soon thereafter.(Because you had started to smoke pot.) I had a shitty acoustic guitar within the year.

Adrian was on Graceland. At the same time we got the disc, there was simultaneously an interview in Guitar World with him and Robert Fripp.(You really are a music nerd. Are you aware of music trivia at the 506 on Sundays? It's generally too hard for us normal folk.) I had no real awareness of Talking Heads or King Crimson (especially KC) at that time. That didn't happen until college, when I actually began to markedly improve on bass (resulting from the embarassment of playing in the basketball band and sucking out loud in front of 15,000 people at the SWC finals) and became interested in "difficult rock" (I loathe the prog nomenclature)(And so you use it endlessly). Two years later I was in a band with my oldest friend. A year after THAT Peanut Gallery was delving into abject stupidity. Race you to the end of the song was the motto.(And perhaps drove your sexual habits?) Cramming as many time signatures as possible into a three minute pop song was standard practice. We worshipped Rush and Genesis and The Police and Talking Heads, but were playing with our egos (as a brief aside, no band should ever wear capes and write 40-minute long songs, regardless of intent or talent)(as another brief aside, what besides ego are most bands playing with? Their geniune need for creative expression? Puh-leez). Then came the rock opera, effectively the bane of the group. The Feldmans (The Corey Feldmans?) followed a year later, which was a direct response to PG in that our goal was to get together a few times a week, get drunk and write ridiculous, self-effacing/self-referential prog rock (there it is) anthems. There are specific moments on the ensuing recording that could very easily be lifted directly from Moving Pictures, but in a laugh out loud sort of way. Laugh out loud if you're 100% geek, I suppose. (We know.)

During that period in the late 90s/early 00s, I was practicing a lot.(Are we already referring to the late 90s/early 00s as "that period?" That period was 8 years ago. Strange.) Not necessarily expanding my understanding of theory, but more my vocabulary. I got into the Heads (and Tom Tom Club), Bowie (finally), Minutemen, back into Pixies and Pavement, Guided By Voices, various post-rock outfits like Sea and Cake and Three Mile Pilot, Queen, Elvis Costello and Elton John (John Deacon, Bruce Thomas and Dee Murray are probably three of my favorite bassists; so melodic and supportive, but totally distinct in their styles... and regardless of the fact I play like an Entwistle obsessed, adderall laced chipmunk). The bulk of my 20s was spent flushing out the cock-rock vernacular and replacing it with substance and quality.("Flushing out" might be a strong way to put it, "repressing" might be more appropriate.) Maybe that's a bit pretentious to say and most likely impossible to achieve, as I am still known to drive away from work with Open Up and Say Ahhh... on the iPod and my outstreched arm flipping an unrepentant fuck you to The Man. I digress. (Thanks for supporting my point though.)

ANYWAY, Adrian Belew is a major component of that effort. I have nothing but respect for anyone able to forge a career in creativity without sacrificing personal principles. Whether those principles are getting laid and fucked up (a la Motley Crue)(all bands are better before they get sober) or writing and performing music for the sake of writing and performing music, the fact remains it's accomplished without denigrating whatever it was that urged them into that line of work to begin with. What I particularly appreciate about Belew, aside from his individualism (you have a man crush), is his sense of melody and songcraft. So may times I hear someone say his music is maybe what John Lennon would be writing were he still alive today.(Wait, how many times have you actually heard that?) I suppose stripped of the perfectly twisted guitar work - yes. Or maybe Adrian would be performing with Lennon, providing it. They seem cut from the same cloth. Count in the Tony Levin connection, and I s'pose (uh, are you in that much of a hurry there, Shorthand McGee?) it's not beyond the scope of reality.

To my mind, Belew exemplifies that iconic sort of modern-media artist, the Kubrick or Warhol or Prince, who is just creatively relentless, but populist.(Your master's degree just paid off.) How does one live like this? That constant output, all within the public eye. (I'm pretty sure the Benjamins are a constant source of motivation.) I know for a fact creativity isn't the sole element of those people's successes. I know plenty of creative people who don't do shit. Who sit at home waiting for something to happen to them, waiting for someone to recognize the power of their genius.(Amen.) There's more to it than creativity, obviously. Self promotion, conceit, work ethic, awareness that an audience exists for whatever it is you have to say (although Rush has an exceptional philosophy on the role of the audience in the creative process, I'll refrain from discussing here as I know most of you bastards loathe Rush) - components.(Loathing Rush does not a bastard make.) And like anything, if you become bored the art declines and you eventually just... stop. Or you resent success and those who established it. Jaz Coleman. Kurt Cobain. Et cetera. (You have time to write out et cetera, but not "suppose?")

ANYWAY, while I started this post as a review of the Belew show, I quickly realized it's been years since I've written a rock show review and had lost track of my goal by the second graf.(HAHAHA!! Graf!! Oh, Mittens. You are seriously warming my heart.) I apologize for the sophomoric ramblings, then. I do want to say that seeing Adrian play with, well, kids... kids half his age... siblings Eric and Julie Slick... who can easily hold their own against the best in the business, probably walk all over them actually, motivated his performance to a different level. He's always good, certainly, but everyone seemed to enjoy this gig more than the last go-round. Not that the last go-round was lacking, but that this one was looser and kookier. Ask Crimson fans - it's universal he's the best part of the show. Fripp has a stick up his butt... I should stick to writing about cars.

I should really be writing music.(And music reviews (that was not a cynical comment)). We (Wallpaper Thieves - http://www.myspace.com/thewallpaperthieves ) now have about 30 or so idea recordings from recent rehearsals, and I have a half dozen or so almost completed songs that need some tuning up. The band is going well, and shows like this one drive us with inspiration and a bit of hope. Brandon and I are slowly becoming a fairly formidible guitar section, and Ken remains the best drummer I've ever played with, regardless of the fact he no longer wants to play drums. Vocals and the damned Moogs are the biggest obstacles now. Albatrosses. With the Torch Marauder connection, we're hoping out premier gig will be sheer insanity. Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.(What does that mean?) As long as it's memorable. My dream is to play Run to the Hills or Aces High with Torch on vocals. That would rule.

Gonna learn the Oberheim parts for Rush's Signals now. Monkey, you can kick me later.(Done.)

One percent of one

I'll have to finish this later, as I'm utterly and perfectly knackered, but the Adrian Belew gig at Cat's Cradle was more or less mind blowing. More than less. I commented to Ken that we probably just saw members of the top one percent of living musicians. Tomorrow I'll write up some typically withering commentary of What This Show Means To Me.
And for what it's worth... Julie Slick, will you marry me?

Consider Darwin

You know how for decades, pathologists and virologists have predicted the human race will someday soon be decimated by a super-virus, a pandemic of ultimate doom? The streets littered with the festering, pox-riddled corpses of millions?
Nah.
The bane of the human race shall be the cell phone. Consider the below text and discuss.
(people are fucking morons)

-Mittens

Texting Man Avoids One Train, Struck By Another

http://www.wlwt.com/news/13930136/detail.html

CINCINNATI -- A man sending a text message avoided being hit by a train going in one direction only to be struck by another train.

Witnesses told police the man was looking down at his cell phone as he crossed some railroad tracks around 9 a.m. at Township Road and Elmwood Avenue in Elmwood Place.

Witnesses said the man waited for a southbound train to pass, put his head down and started walking across the tracks.

The man apparently did not see or hear a northbound train as it approached, witnesses said.

“It's one of those things, you kind of see it coming but you don't think it's going to happen like that, and the way he was walking and stuff and I saw that train closing in, I honestly thought he had made it,” said witness Mike Billups.

The victim, whose name has not been released, was taken to University Hospital with undisclosed injuries.

New name for this shit

At rehearsal last week, Brandon (the guitarist) suddenly remembered an old nickname he'd given me - Mittens. We can't remember the impetus for this, other than the fact it sounds funny. It then occurred to me that Monkey with Mittens would be a good name for this blog, so henceforth it shall be known as such.

Monkey with Mittens. That's good shit.

What IS postmodernity, anyway?

I started a new job last Tuesday, which is the exact cause of my lack of of posting. Job, you ask? Yarp. I'm working in a furniture warehouse, assembling, loading, unloading. moving. I'd classify it as manual labor, something I haven't done since I was 17. The job has left on the floor, me utterly sapped. I can point to my absolute lack of activity for the past several months as the main culprit for my physical state, but I can also say with qualification that the work is actually pretty fucking hard. It's hot, the shit is heavy, and there's a lot of it. Does this make me more of a man? Me eat meat now.

It was a strange realization on Saturday morning when I decided I wasn't dreading work. I'm finding myself actually enjoying it, to be perfectly honest. Perhaps it's the fact at the end of the day I can look at the loading dock and see the actual product of my labor? There's a tangible result. I'm realizing this is a major element of my sense of job satisfaction - working toward the actual creation and completion of someTHING. I think that's what I feel the need to play in bands, to engage in that writing and recording process. The live performance is always cathartic, but the creative process, even the labor process of arranging, rehearsing, recording, is gratifying in that there's a tangible end result. With most office jobs there's usually a project or task to be completed, but it seems so much of the work is only work in a post-modern sense. Email, phone calls, shuffling papers. It's a mobius loop of bullshit. Even when the job is completed, there rarely seems to be any real sense of accomplishment or even the possibility of saying to someone, "Look what I did."

I think I've pretty much quit drinking. What do you have to say about that?

Nothing to see here...

This is merely an observation. I've spent the past hour or so filling out job applications - by hand. The State of North Carolina has yet to jump on this spindly Interweb bandwagon and so requires job applicants to write, by hand, all application information on printed forms. My hand hurts so badly I had to stop for a bit. I can't remember the last time I wrote with a pen continuously for more than a few minutes at a time, usually while taking notes for work. But this is insane. I believe my hand has been getting plenty of exercise FROM PLAYING GUITAR. Get your minds out of the gutter. Besides, I'm a lefty when it comes to that.

One of my good buddies at my last job was the HR director, and I know for a fact he was generally unenthusiastic about hand-written applicatons simply because they were hard to read and information would often be entered into the applicant database incorrectly. It's simply inefficient. Why the state has not made the leap to either interactive online forms or if nothing else a pre-formatted PDF is just beyond me. It takes about a half hour to format a single-page PDF, and maybe another hour to set up the fields so they can be transferred to a database. Oh oh oh! And if you apply for more than one State job, you have to submit an entirely new application because none of the departments and divisions share an applicant database. What a bunch of cock knockers.

Whatever. I think I can finish now.
Applying for jobs blows buttholes, regardless of the process.

Oh, and I have listened to the remastered edition of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis about three times so far today. It's fantastic sounding. As epic and pompous as anything you've ever heard, but Peter Gabriel pulls it off cause he's Peter Fucking Gabriel. And shut up already, Monkey - Phil Collins was and remains a badfuckingass drummer, regardless of that Disney Tarzan abomination.




Does this thing have an effing spell checker? No? Please... Put that fucking coffee down. Coffee is for closers.

Why not talk about dating and sex?!?!

Oh, Morlock. I love it when you give me that easy in.

There are a number of cliched responses I could offer to what you've written below (and I probably will, over beers while you help me paint my house), but you've made some things float to my mind. First of all, this place is larger than you think, with a healthy, and largely well-educated, transient population. That means that there is a good chance that anyone you have the opportunity to tango with may well be gone in 6 to 12 months (if not by this weekend). This is also a place that supports strong, ambitious women - so worries about ruining your position as a nice guy are largely unfounded. Your worries should be about being eaten alive for breakfast by the ball-breakers you are certain to encounter in this neck of the woods.

And, as an aside - I am going to let you in on what could either be Spanish Fly or penis repellent to women our age: honesty. I know this smacks of the cliched response I made note to avoid, but it's true. You have no job and no permanent place to live (for now), but that's not exactly the same as having no ambition (or lacking the skills to fulfill an ambition) and no motivation for moving forward. The honesty thing is tricky though; if someone asked you what you've been doing with yourself in the space between jobs, would your honest answer be, well, interesting? Would it reveal something about your character or your personality? Is what you have been doing what you want to be doing to pass the time? If it is, good. If it isn't, then do what you want to be able to tell people that you do. Make yourself fuckable.

Trust me when I say that for women (well, at least some of them) it isn't all about jobs, or a thick head of hair, or the lack of a paunch when considering guys. Mostly it's about someone who has a life that they enjoy and who doesn't seem weighed down with baggage and dark, depressing shit (we've grown out of that phase of our lives where the dark, depressing shit is actually attractive). When it comes down to it, it's mostly about cracking up and feeling good and (god help me) being taken seriously every once in awhile.

And aren't most things cyclical? Why rationalize away a decreased libido? Wouldn't it make sense that not exercising and not feeling confident about what's happening at this exact moment would affect your interest in... performing? And, I hate to break it to you, but we aren't quite middle-aged, so it's too soon to start gathering those excuses. You're in a funk, and not in an inevitable and unavoidable lifestyle as a result of your chronological place on the life spectrum.

Okay, so maybe this did turn into a sort of cliched response, but fuck it. You know why we hate cliches? Because sometimes they are true and sometimes they apply to our lives and it's annoying.

So turn off the fucking television and get your ass down to the JC Penny. And fill out an application while you're there.

The Monkey

The problem with sleeping (around)

I fell asleep last night with a perfectly formed, fully evolved blog post leaping around my brain, like one of those horny little capuchin monkeys at the zoo (remember the time I went with Adam, Jamie, Trisha, Andrea and Jake to the Little Rock Zoo and we saw a baby gorilla, and a tiger growled at Adam and me, and then we watched two monkeys put on an Amsterdam-style sex show? Then we had Whole Hog ribs and went to the Travs game. Best day so far this year...) only to wake up with no concept of what it was. My fucking brain. Ken and I watched Mind Control last night, a show on Sci-Fi dealing with subliminal suggestion, hypnosis, brainwashing, etc. The creator and host, Derren Brown, was quite a notorious celebrity in England while I lived there, thanks mainly to a live Russian roulette special episode of his program on Channel 4. After seeing a few episodes of the American version of the show, we have decided this man could possibly be the most evil man on the planet. He can persuade almost anyone to do almost anything, using nothing more than psychology. It's really fascinating stuff, to consider our will, beliefs, ideals, motivations, can all be redirected, modified or simply erased by someone who possesses a better understanding of how and why the mind does what it does. How deeply embedded in our being is this stuff? Is it just programming? Simple software ticking over within our biological computers? I'm sure if Sartre were alive to see this program he'd weep tears of bitter joy into his absinthe.

Seeing as how I really have nothing of value to discuss, why not talk about dating and sex. Great job! Without going into too much detail, I haven't gotten any of either in quite some time. And now I'm starting to think about it more frequently. For a time, and not too long ago, I was actually beginning to feel as though I was losing interest in sex. Not totally, but definitely in a significantly reduced capacity. I suppose I measure this by the declining frequency of doing what all boys do, or any oopsies while sleeping if I did skip a day or two. While it's a fact that as men age into their 40s, they do lose some sex drive. By this point, men have procreated and the biological need for sex is no longer present. In addition to the cruelty of nature (or possibly mercy), there's definitely a self-confidence/image issue at play. I'm taking less of a Steve McQueen or Paul Newman path into middle-age, instead being forced down the far less glorious Hank Hill Route. Thinning hair on the head (which is obviously retreating to other locations on the body), paunchy middle, flattening ass. The obvious defense is exercise, which I have successfully avoided avoided for the past few months. A year ago I was running 20-24 miles per week, thanks mainly to my running partner's marital issues. We would run for hours, talking through his life. Do you want to get a divorce? Do you want to fuck your boss? Why did you do that? Etc. Once the issue was resolved however (everything worked out and they now have a kid), we stopped. He began working out in the mornings with his wife to reforge that sweet, sweet connubial bliss. I just got fat.

Now I am in a new city, one seemingly teeming with amazing single women. And the fire in my pantses has been rekindled. The ensuing conundrum revolves around my ongoing self-image issues (coupled with the fact I have no job and no place to live). I can't really date at this time, but this place is so small that I can't really just get it on with whomever (I also consider the strong possibility anyone I'd want to get it on with would also be someone I would want to date at a later, more suitable time) without damaging my stature as a nice guy and thus future dating possibilities. This is also ignoring the fact that in my present condition, I don't know if I could actually attract anyone worthwhile (ie without paying them) for said wiggle wiggle woo-ha. What's a geek to do? Is Internet dating the solution? Maybe? I could also consider older women. Cougars. That's what my mom called them. I think she has a lot of couger friends - overworked, overstressed elementary school teachers with frustrated libidos. I suppose that's an experience every man should have. Where do you go to pick up older women? JC Penney?
(that's awful... I should have never even mentioned that thought... apologies...)

Watching Star Trek now - keeps my mind of the na-na na-na. Or maybe just keeps it away... Women can smell Trek on a man, can't they? Can't you?

Engage.