Desert line.

IMG00052-20101125-1328.jpg

Frank

Franklin

Death hag

Hard to believe.

So here we go about to embark on the adventure of making a thanks giving meal. It's sort of stupid, what the tradition has evolved into and where it came from but ultimately I'd rather have stupid tradition than none at all. So gander at my horn of plenty above and consider that this is the first time Angela and I have ever attempted to host a thanksgiving meal. And that we will have out of town family present to boot. I'm nervous to try and cook the turkey but everyone assures me it's easier than it seems.
Today at work Craig gave me a pecan pie and ham. Now I have something else I need to learn to cook.

Ronnie guitar

Ronnie sea monster.

Ronnie California

Last weekend kicked off with a big surprise. I had a rehearsal Friday evening with Devin Tait & the Traitors. After which we went to our keyboard player, Elene's place. Saturday Morning I woke up around 9:00 am, my plan was to get Angela on the road to San Diego and then go put in a day of work Craig's house. At 9:15 my phone rang and it the caller ID proclaimed that my front gate wanted to speak with me. Well this is unexpected. I knew my uncle would be ringing me sometime Sunday morning, but this Saturday business was totally unexpected. Let me just put my failed attempt at building suspense to rest, as you already guessed or know, it was in fact Ronnie at the gate. He drove from Kansas to California in about 26 hours. With a 5 hour nap in his car in Kingman Arizona.
I brewed Ronnie a pot of Coffee, since he hadn't had any on the road. I then took Angela to the gas station to check her oil, water and fill up her car for her trip. She can do all these things herself, but we've found that a girl opening her hood in a gas station is like a beacon for creepy.
Angie dropped me off back home on her way out of town and Ronnie and I had breakfast together. It was great to see my friend again, and I was a bit sad that I had to go work. Work was fast and proved to be a very good thing. Craig sent me home after only 2 hours with more cash than I deserved and some of California's finest medical plant products.
Ronnie and I then began a day of adventuring.

Here we are enjoying the old zoo in Griffith Park. I drug Ronnie all around the park and drove him through much of the east side of Los Angeles. I have a feeling my driving was giving him a minor heart attacks here and there but he rode it out like a champ.
Our day of seeing the sites had left us hungry so we stopped off for a burrito. We then went to the store for beer and coffee for the morning.
We returned home and decided to kick our feet up.
We enjoyed our beers, worked on my guitars. I recorded some basic tracks for a new version of a new song, "I'm a mutation". Try as I might I could not get Ronnie to lay down a guitar track. He won't escape me completely though.

Devin was busy with theatre tickets when I called him, but Dylan was free and excited to see Ronnie so he came over. The three of us took a delightful dip in the hot tub and had a good chat. Soon Dylan left and Ronnie and I called it a night.

Sunday morning we woke up around 9:15 and had the coffee we bought the day before. I ventured out and picked up some bagels. I made sure all the pets were cared for and we then made our way out to Malibu. Ronnie followed me on the trip, I was a bit nervous for him, there are 3 freeways on the way to Malibu from my place and they can be harrowing when you drive them everyday, Ronnie did fine though and soon we were at K's place in Malibu looking over the pacific ocean.

K gave Ronnie a tour of the grounds, letting him get acquainted with his new temporary living situation. Soon that was over and we were mixing up concrete and getting to work. We worked away the afternoon and into the evening. IN the end the concrete pour had gone very well and seemed to set up nicely.
Just as we were finishing Devin showed up with food and beer! What a hero. We ate and talked and soon we ventured to the patio with instruments for a jam. It was cool to look around and see everyone playing at once. By default we ended up playing songs I wrote or know. I felt a bit like a dominator, but I'd rather be playing then not so someone has to make that happen. I had a total blast dusting off many of my old tunes. Devin and I even played a few Singe songs, which was a total trip.

Eventually we called it a night and I drove home to see Angela, freshly back from San Diego. We had a few beers and unwound together. And then I began a week of running without my head.

Uncle Rambler

I suppose yesterdays veterans day post comes off a touch disrespectful. I happened to come across the quote yesterday while reading about Iain Banks and I just couldn't resist. It was just too coincidental to pass up posting.

I have varied my morning routine somewhat. Rather than staying in bed until the very last second, popping out of bed and pulling on my clothes, brushing my teeth and washing my face and running out the door 5 minutes after I wake up, I've actually been getting up and having a cup of coffee or two on the couch. It's been nice to have a little time with Angela and the pets before starting my day.

I'm very excited. Uncle Ronnie is loaded up and on the road to California. I've been helping good friend and ultra producer Hoagie "K" rebuild his studio in Malibu. I have only been able to get out to Malibu about once a week since the project began, which simply isn't enough extra help, so my recently retired uncle has made the big step to load up and drive out to assist. He'll be waking up every morning overlooking the pacific ocean for the next three weeks to a month. I'm over the moon.

He should arrive here ready for rest after a long haul sometime Sunday morning.

The Use of Weapons

"In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and in every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots." - Iain M. Banks

Happy Veterans Day.

Fresh Flash

Wake up the instigator
Call out the inebriator
it's as good a day as any just to have a while

got my start in axes, blessed be the fascist, that make it all make sense, if only for a while

Stood together cheering, nodding then repairing
I have milk to last for days,
or until it sours

Yummy

Until the end a perspective

I found me interesting today

Occasionally I look back at my blog, to see what I wrote about on this very day some years back. Five years ago on this day I wrote this, and I still like it today:

Dear Friends,
I find myself wanting to write down all the things you've done. I want to copy paste your entire life into multiple formats in the case of fires and floods. I know this is not possible or logical but I'm amazed and feeling alive with all of you, I see other people who don't feel their lives like this, and I don't want to find myself within their ranks.
Are all these memories only possible because we are willing to pay for them with forgetting?
I know that a precious item held close to the heart is a joy to have, but I must keep in mind that if my arms are full of too many precious items I will never have free hands with which to pick new ones up.
I rely on this blog as a means of recording things that are important to me, they don't all fit here, and the most inspiring items can not be expressed in word form. Our minds are big. Friends, lets all remember to listen to each other and to talk to one another, you never know when your going to need know something your friends have already learned.
Thanks

I Have an Extra Set of Arms

I am a firm believer in taking naps. I was talking with a friend last night about how it is basically the equivalent of hitting 'reset' on a piece of electronic gear which has ceased to function normally. When it comes to naps, I am blessed. I can benefit from a very short nap. I can lay down feeling beat for just eight minutes and get up feeling new. The result isn't one hundred percent, but it's in the seventies for certain. And considering I play hard an fast with a night's sleep it's understandable that I would occasionally be so far overdrawn from the sheep bank that I nothing short of death would lead me back to rest.
This isn't what I meant to say about naps at all. I wanted to talk about my extra set of arms. I think naps are great for more than the rest/reset reason. There is something to our sleeping life that is mystical. Yet in the course of a long sleep we go so far that most of it never travels back, least of all the body sensation of how it felt to be there, or when we are deep in it, the sensation of our physical body at rest is forgotten.
At work on my breaks I will lay down on some chairs I have pushed together in the warehouse and set my alarm for 12 minutes. I will then pull my hoodie down over my eyes, but not my nose, as I cannot sleep while I can't breath. I will cross my arms over my chest and shut my eyes. I don't try and fall asleep, I just sink into the dark. Soon my thoughts completely drift and I am on the edge of a dream. What I've noticed lately is that very often my mind comes around to encountering an object, I seldom know or remember what the object is, it's usually something mundane. What I find striking though is that I am physically manipulating the object with my hands, yet at the same time I can feel my arms and hands folded across my chest.
Today when I awoke from my nap I thought to myself, is this how it feels to be an amputee? Obviously not, because rather than a lack of limbs I have an abundance. It is a very powerful feeling to have four arms and I now look forward to the sensation as much as the resting.

Late night dinner.

Malibu sunset.

Goals

I'm going to have a good week. I tell myself this and I'm aware that such notions disolve rapidly sometimes. This time I have it on good authority. Yesterday I did good work at work, which felt nice. Then I went home, had a puff and went for a run. I ran along the LA river, doing interaval sprints. My lungs were burnin, it felt great. It was a clear winter sky laying over top of me, and I had the familiar feeling of this season. A reminder of long walks I once took in Hays, Kansas to watch the sunset in the winter sky.
After the run Angela and I ate a fine meal which she prepared while I ran. We then went to two different home depots in order to find more protective coverings to bunny proof the wires ran here and there about the apartment. We then went to another store and picked up a few more supplies, and took a short drive to check the progress of some crazy fellas halloween display in glendale. He has a lot of work to do, but he was out front working by shop light at 9:30 when we drove by, so I have faith he can get it done.
We returned home and I started moving the furniture around. We've decided to add a desk in the corner of the living room where Angela will work on her projects, while I work at the other desk on mine. I moved the heavy ass television and it's lardo cousin the book shelf. Then it was time to re-wrap many of the wires, while I was at it I decided to splice out a section of the cable. I had doubts about it's continuity, since Bettina had chewed through it rather well.
Finalaly around 11:30 I finished my tasks, this is when I meant to start working on finishing the mix of Devin's song "sleepytown", but I was beat so I just joined Angela in bed and watched a few episodes of "It's Always Sunny".

Tonight I'm headed to Malibu after work to help revamp Seamonster Sounds.

Buddy and I headed to the bank

I'm clearing my phone of pics and dumping them here