I've had this thing lately where I'm like, 'fuck snake eyes,' and with completely unreasonable reasons, but like...I'm the complicated artsy type, right, so it's all good. I've just been insisting that my 'lesser-known,' and 'more experimental' (lol, I have no experimental songs) shit is better and worth more talk. This is almost true. But for real, Snake Eyes is my Teen Spirit or whatever and I like pretending to hate it but I was strolling memory lane today and wanted to blog about it, so this is the thing with Snake Eyes.
Snake Eyes took an assload of work to write. Probably more than any other song I've written, in that I usually sit down and write some shit, but this song took like three weeks of lyric-writing, song studying, heartbreak and youtube.
My thing at the time was to go all out on the sad bastard pop music thing. I wanted to capture the over-dramaticism of like, Paul Anka when he's sad bastard, and the catchiness and perfection (ugh) of crooner shit (ie standards). Plus I wanted to write a song to convince this girl that I was worth her time. During this time, this guy Evan I was selling drugs with showed me this video on youtube of My Chemical Romance doing their song, Cancer, with just a guitar. And I won't explain why it took a while to convince me to watch fucking MCR, but I watched it, and it kicked my ass and I became obsessed and frustrated with the fact that they had written such a bomb song based on pretty much the same principles I had in mind (even if they didn't realize). Also I was listening to the oldies station all fucking day at work, and soaking it in, trying to figure it out.
Plus writing the lyrics took like 25 pages of lyric writing and rewriting. (Just said writing three times in one sentence, ugh.) Then one night I was at my parent's house, creeping in the front room by myself with a lamp and a notebook and my little brother's guitar and the shit just came together, finally. Although it took a lot of working out the kinks and such.
Then it was finished and I dropped it on some folks and that went pretty well. Never showed it to the girl though. Yet.
editor's note: also, i later realized that for the main riff in the song i literally play the chords from 'about a girl' in reverse, with a capo.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
As I write this novella I can feel myself whirring down into fictional existential darkness like a falling ceiling fan onto a glass table in a living room full of family members. I slowly, with darkened perceptive pretension, feel myself drift from my family to a colder spot, in a small apartment where I take everything (especially myself) too seriously. And I feel like investing my emotions into a fictional character makes my problems disappear but it doesn't; instead I just stop experiencing everything and weeks pass by in impatient blurs pointed nowhere, and girls disappear and reappear vapidly, urgently, quietly, quickly. And when I scribble a barely legible 'The End' near the end of my faded, wrinkled, booze stained notebook, what next?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
'I'm startin' to talk to you in prooooose...'
So lately I've just been working on a novella a lot. I have this crazily developed character, plot line, dialogue, etc., and I'm pumped about it. Anyway, the title is 'Someday I'll Be Nothing Again (or Someone Else's Breaking Heart)'
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Are you ready for my monkey?
It's 9:39 am, Sunday morning, and it's a ridiculous mess in my livingroom, and I'm sitting in the middle of it. JD is asleep on the floor in my room and Arbeau is across from me on the other couch, Cam has just left and Al Pal went home last night. I'm drinking lukewarm Alexander Keith's and having a cigarette, while listening to some country tunes playing softly in the background. I think I have to go to a family thing later today.
I hope it's warm out. I wish my beer was colder. Our plan was to stay up and go somewhere to have a beer while the sun came up but I was fucking dead at like 2am. We started drinking at like 6:30pm yesterday but JD finished his La Chamiza in like 20 minutes, so he was just trashed and ended up saying some hilarious things to some hilarious people on the ol' MSN, and it was pretty awesome.
We went out to go to McDonald's yesterday, but it was closed. We ended up smoking a huge joint with Troy Strokes and Brock on the rocks under the boardwalk, and then sat and had a beer in the sunshine; it was fucking awesome. We eventually bought some weed and smoked that, then matched with JJ and Kelly at their crib and did the whole Jamaican hot box thing or whatever in the bathroom which was generally amusing but way too sweaty.
It's gonna be a good summer.
On Monday night Alex and I decided we should try DXM, which was obviously a good idea. We took about twelve of these red tablets of fast-acting Tussin, at first, and ate the rest of them while walking around uptown, which I enjoyed, especially since I was really stoked on my outfit at the time.
While we were walking it started to get a bit difficult to walk and talk, so we peeled back to the crib, finish off each of our bottles (of pills), and decided to watch MTV from the 80's, because of my recent obsession with Less Than Zero. Anyway we watch this for a while but when a song by the Tubes called 'Monkey Time' comes on, it's just way too much. I posted about it on the bucks fbook group. Anyway it was fucking us up and we couldn't walk and we decided that we needed weed.
So we go down to JJ's and we ask him if he can buy the weed for us, since we're both a bit fucked up. He says cool and we smoke a few bowls with him. At this point I just feel kinda drunk and high and can't walk and shit, and I'm a bit anxious and just want to get high to even me out. The first bowl succeeds in that respect, and we smoke another, but after the second bowl, I fucking freak out.
I start to get pins and needles in my entire body and my hand scares the shit out of me and Al Pal is just in the bathroom laughing and JJ is trying to calm me down. I make JJ give me a hug because I needed to 'squeeze something in my arms' and he complied. Then I started pacing while Al Pal's laughin up a storm, and JJ is trying to tell me it's just peaking and I'll be fine, but I'm fucked up and just keep pacing. Then Al Pal asks if I want to go out for a smoke, and I tell him that I don't want to smoke (wierd) but I'll go outside.
So we go outside and I'm really enjoying breathing air but I can't stop moving so I suggest we go on a bit of a tear. Alex agrees and we tell JJ what's up and go outside. We walk up to my place but every song I try to listen to fucks me up, and I can't sit down without being overcome by the drug, so we opt to walk. So I get some sweaters that make me happy, a bottle of water that I keep with me for the whole adventure, and my shades and we peel out, high as shit. We go up Murder Row, through the burial ground, where we give a dude some change, then down King street and onto the boardwalk, following it onto the pink path, walking very quickly because neither of us can control our legs.
So I kick the idea that we should walk to the west side and call JJ from the Tim's or something, cause we told him we would be back. So we walk quickly and both of us are trying to stop walking just to see if we can do it, which we can't for a while. When we finally succeed at stopping, we have to keep going because it feels like we're being sucked into a black hole. So we keep going up Chesley drive, cross the road, and climb up a few hills to take the train tracks. We follow the tracks onto the reversing falls bridge and it's as intense as we thought it was gonna be.
The water seems impossibly close to us, and looks like a gigantic dark blue silk blanket with whales diving anrgrily beneath it. So we stare at this for a while and continue. We walk to Lancaster and call JJ, and I immediately forget everything I said to him. Then we have a smoke and decide to go to McDonald's, but I'm insistent on only eating stuff that's 'real,' so I ask for a garden salad with no dressing and a bottle of water. Al Pal gets a double cheeseburger or something, but immediately regrets it when he starts to eat it, and just eats some of my lettuce. While Al Pal ordered the food, I circled a table til I decided it was fit to sit in, and then sat there with my hood up and sunglasses on at about 11 at night, going through Alex's bookbag to find his iPod and listening to Hunter S. Thompson speeches.
We call Cam from a payphone and ramble on about being high and then we take the bus back uptown, which was fucking awesome. It was like a rollercoaster. We get uptown and it seems like a two second walk, and we get our weed, leave some for JJ to pay him back, and hit up the crib, where we smoked hella weeds because we were told that coming down was shitty. So after we smoke hella weeds I try to go to sleep but everytime I close my eyes I get this horrific, guts and flesh filled screensaver in my head that keeps me up. I lay there trying to keep my eyes open for a little while and suddenly it feels like the whole bed flips over and I'm upside down, but I'm not really. I almost get up to smoke more weed, but I opt to just lay there and eventually I fall asleep.
We wake up to the alarm at 5:30am, and smoke a bunch of weed. Then we head to the Irving to get smokes, and to Tim's to have a bagel and coffee, then we have a smoke in King's square and I go to work. Work was fucked, a little, but I told the old man about DXM and he thought it was hilarious.
Anyway I gotta get another beer, I was gonna write about the Alex Sem and David R. 'Joint Cross-Town Tour', but I'll kick you that shit in person, or something. Cheers to summer.
I hope it's warm out. I wish my beer was colder. Our plan was to stay up and go somewhere to have a beer while the sun came up but I was fucking dead at like 2am. We started drinking at like 6:30pm yesterday but JD finished his La Chamiza in like 20 minutes, so he was just trashed and ended up saying some hilarious things to some hilarious people on the ol' MSN, and it was pretty awesome.
We went out to go to McDonald's yesterday, but it was closed. We ended up smoking a huge joint with Troy Strokes and Brock on the rocks under the boardwalk, and then sat and had a beer in the sunshine; it was fucking awesome. We eventually bought some weed and smoked that, then matched with JJ and Kelly at their crib and did the whole Jamaican hot box thing or whatever in the bathroom which was generally amusing but way too sweaty.
It's gonna be a good summer.
On Monday night Alex and I decided we should try DXM, which was obviously a good idea. We took about twelve of these red tablets of fast-acting Tussin, at first, and ate the rest of them while walking around uptown, which I enjoyed, especially since I was really stoked on my outfit at the time.
While we were walking it started to get a bit difficult to walk and talk, so we peeled back to the crib, finish off each of our bottles (of pills), and decided to watch MTV from the 80's, because of my recent obsession with Less Than Zero. Anyway we watch this for a while but when a song by the Tubes called 'Monkey Time' comes on, it's just way too much. I posted about it on the bucks fbook group. Anyway it was fucking us up and we couldn't walk and we decided that we needed weed.
So we go down to JJ's and we ask him if he can buy the weed for us, since we're both a bit fucked up. He says cool and we smoke a few bowls with him. At this point I just feel kinda drunk and high and can't walk and shit, and I'm a bit anxious and just want to get high to even me out. The first bowl succeeds in that respect, and we smoke another, but after the second bowl, I fucking freak out.
I start to get pins and needles in my entire body and my hand scares the shit out of me and Al Pal is just in the bathroom laughing and JJ is trying to calm me down. I make JJ give me a hug because I needed to 'squeeze something in my arms' and he complied. Then I started pacing while Al Pal's laughin up a storm, and JJ is trying to tell me it's just peaking and I'll be fine, but I'm fucked up and just keep pacing. Then Al Pal asks if I want to go out for a smoke, and I tell him that I don't want to smoke (wierd) but I'll go outside.
So we go outside and I'm really enjoying breathing air but I can't stop moving so I suggest we go on a bit of a tear. Alex agrees and we tell JJ what's up and go outside. We walk up to my place but every song I try to listen to fucks me up, and I can't sit down without being overcome by the drug, so we opt to walk. So I get some sweaters that make me happy, a bottle of water that I keep with me for the whole adventure, and my shades and we peel out, high as shit. We go up Murder Row, through the burial ground, where we give a dude some change, then down King street and onto the boardwalk, following it onto the pink path, walking very quickly because neither of us can control our legs.
So I kick the idea that we should walk to the west side and call JJ from the Tim's or something, cause we told him we would be back. So we walk quickly and both of us are trying to stop walking just to see if we can do it, which we can't for a while. When we finally succeed at stopping, we have to keep going because it feels like we're being sucked into a black hole. So we keep going up Chesley drive, cross the road, and climb up a few hills to take the train tracks. We follow the tracks onto the reversing falls bridge and it's as intense as we thought it was gonna be.
The water seems impossibly close to us, and looks like a gigantic dark blue silk blanket with whales diving anrgrily beneath it. So we stare at this for a while and continue. We walk to Lancaster and call JJ, and I immediately forget everything I said to him. Then we have a smoke and decide to go to McDonald's, but I'm insistent on only eating stuff that's 'real,' so I ask for a garden salad with no dressing and a bottle of water. Al Pal gets a double cheeseburger or something, but immediately regrets it when he starts to eat it, and just eats some of my lettuce. While Al Pal ordered the food, I circled a table til I decided it was fit to sit in, and then sat there with my hood up and sunglasses on at about 11 at night, going through Alex's bookbag to find his iPod and listening to Hunter S. Thompson speeches.
We call Cam from a payphone and ramble on about being high and then we take the bus back uptown, which was fucking awesome. It was like a rollercoaster. We get uptown and it seems like a two second walk, and we get our weed, leave some for JJ to pay him back, and hit up the crib, where we smoked hella weeds because we were told that coming down was shitty. So after we smoke hella weeds I try to go to sleep but everytime I close my eyes I get this horrific, guts and flesh filled screensaver in my head that keeps me up. I lay there trying to keep my eyes open for a little while and suddenly it feels like the whole bed flips over and I'm upside down, but I'm not really. I almost get up to smoke more weed, but I opt to just lay there and eventually I fall asleep.
We wake up to the alarm at 5:30am, and smoke a bunch of weed. Then we head to the Irving to get smokes, and to Tim's to have a bagel and coffee, then we have a smoke in King's square and I go to work. Work was fucked, a little, but I told the old man about DXM and he thought it was hilarious.
Anyway I gotta get another beer, I was gonna write about the Alex Sem and David R. 'Joint Cross-Town Tour', but I'll kick you that shit in person, or something. Cheers to summer.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
A Lake in a Strong Wind
It kind of looks like I'm bleeding down my tie from a slit in my neck. I fucking love this shirt. This shirt is perfect. This tie really ties these articles of clothing together, so to speak. Excellent. Fuck. My head hurts. I'm completely still, staring into a mirror in an apartment somewhere that a dude I know lives in, and I'm drunk and I'm trying not to ask myself who I am. I don't.
I don't.
I don't. 'Who are you?' Yes.
Then I do, I guess. I'm tired. I don't want to sleep here. I don't want to go home. I want to run for a little while under the dark blue crystal skies and by the river, and feel connected to anyone or anything and call my grandmother from a payphone and make plans to play cards in a small kitchen at an ancient table with sunshine everywhere and coffee and I would be sobre that day. Yes.
'Who are you?'
What does that mean, really? I'm certainly not trying to be a pseudo-existentialist. I just want to know. Genuinely and truly. Certainly and madly. Sorrowful and longingly. Et cetera. I'm so tired. I hope no one knocks.
'Who are you?'
Someone knocks. I say nothing. I say nothing. He or she knocks again. I think it's a he based on the forcefulness of the knocking, but I can't be sure, of course. Yes. He knocks again and says,
'Man, who's in there?
'Who's in there.
'Hello?! Hey,'
'Hey man, it's me, man, I'm just being sick, man.' This was the best lie to tell. 'Sorry, dude.'
'Oh, shit, man, that's cool, I just need in there. So...'
'Yeh, man, it's cool, just give me a sec.'
I eventually get out of there and try to look nauseaus but I can't figure out how to do that so it's not possibly working. I walk into the livingroom and there's three people in there and two of them appear to be sleeping and the other one is just really fucked up. He's talking quietly and being jittery and awful and looks at me intensely and it puts me on edge and I'm very, very drunk and I want to go home.
'What's goin on, man?' I say, unconvincingly.
'Huh? Huh, man? Like...Listen man, I gotta go to the hospital.'
'What man, whaddaya mean, man, yer just high.'
'I'm serious man, I gotta go to the hospital and Anne and Adam are way too fucked up, and fucking Brittany got right pissed at Adam and left and I gotta fucking go to the fucking...the...the fucking hospital, man.'
I'm very seriously pissed about this situation and I don't know who I am but I know these people even less. I'm so fucking tired. I'm drunk and I don't want to drive but if I call 911 I'll have to talk to cops, and there's no fucking way I'm doing that. I really don't know this Adam dude but he's in high school, I think, so I don't know why he's here. Why are any high school kids here? Why am I here, actually? I'm fucking twenty-one. I'm too old for this shit. I realize I just referred to being too old at twenty-one. How sad. My back hurts. I get the keys from Alex for his car.
I get into the car after throwing the fucked up teens into the backseat and head to the hospital and it sucks. I drop them off and get the fuck outta there and I go home with this other persons car and slowly drag my feet up the long staircase and to my door. I unlock three locks, stumble in, turn around and relock all of them. I turn on a lamp and sit on my couch, take off my shoes, and yawn, spinning. Spinning. I get up and get water and walk around my apartment muttering to myself about something and sipping water, trying not to spin. It's always like this and I want to get drunk tomorrow. I stand in the mirror and try to focus on parts of my face but they all fall and crumble and blur and move into and out of each other like a lake in a strong wind played in slow motion.
'Who are you?'
Um. 'Who are you?'
Isn't that a song?
I don't.
I don't. 'Who are you?' Yes.
Then I do, I guess. I'm tired. I don't want to sleep here. I don't want to go home. I want to run for a little while under the dark blue crystal skies and by the river, and feel connected to anyone or anything and call my grandmother from a payphone and make plans to play cards in a small kitchen at an ancient table with sunshine everywhere and coffee and I would be sobre that day. Yes.
'Who are you?'
What does that mean, really? I'm certainly not trying to be a pseudo-existentialist. I just want to know. Genuinely and truly. Certainly and madly. Sorrowful and longingly. Et cetera. I'm so tired. I hope no one knocks.
'Who are you?'
Someone knocks. I say nothing. I say nothing. He or she knocks again. I think it's a he based on the forcefulness of the knocking, but I can't be sure, of course. Yes. He knocks again and says,
'Man, who's in there?
'Who's in there.
'Hello?! Hey,'
'Hey man, it's me, man, I'm just being sick, man.' This was the best lie to tell. 'Sorry, dude.'
'Oh, shit, man, that's cool, I just need in there. So...'
'Yeh, man, it's cool, just give me a sec.'
I eventually get out of there and try to look nauseaus but I can't figure out how to do that so it's not possibly working. I walk into the livingroom and there's three people in there and two of them appear to be sleeping and the other one is just really fucked up. He's talking quietly and being jittery and awful and looks at me intensely and it puts me on edge and I'm very, very drunk and I want to go home.
'What's goin on, man?' I say, unconvincingly.
'Huh? Huh, man? Like...Listen man, I gotta go to the hospital.'
'What man, whaddaya mean, man, yer just high.'
'I'm serious man, I gotta go to the hospital and Anne and Adam are way too fucked up, and fucking Brittany got right pissed at Adam and left and I gotta fucking go to the fucking...the...the fucking hospital, man.'
I'm very seriously pissed about this situation and I don't know who I am but I know these people even less. I'm so fucking tired. I'm drunk and I don't want to drive but if I call 911 I'll have to talk to cops, and there's no fucking way I'm doing that. I really don't know this Adam dude but he's in high school, I think, so I don't know why he's here. Why are any high school kids here? Why am I here, actually? I'm fucking twenty-one. I'm too old for this shit. I realize I just referred to being too old at twenty-one. How sad. My back hurts. I get the keys from Alex for his car.
I get into the car after throwing the fucked up teens into the backseat and head to the hospital and it sucks. I drop them off and get the fuck outta there and I go home with this other persons car and slowly drag my feet up the long staircase and to my door. I unlock three locks, stumble in, turn around and relock all of them. I turn on a lamp and sit on my couch, take off my shoes, and yawn, spinning. Spinning. I get up and get water and walk around my apartment muttering to myself about something and sipping water, trying not to spin. It's always like this and I want to get drunk tomorrow. I stand in the mirror and try to focus on parts of my face but they all fall and crumble and blur and move into and out of each other like a lake in a strong wind played in slow motion.
'Who are you?'
Um. 'Who are you?'
Isn't that a song?
Friday, April 18, 2008
We Should Buy Some Drugs
Greetings. We just got back from playing at the Interaction Kids Theater or something, where I sang the words, 'We should buy some drugs' twelve times in a song to a bunch of like, 13 year old girls. Didn't really realize what the crowd was about beforehand, but no one seemed to react at all, besides these two old ladies.
It was kind of a shitty show generally, on account of the crowd and the sound, but we were mad high. Also, I ran into the subject of Blue & Grey, and was way too high for that situation, and also fuck. But I was secretly hoping that would happen.
The Felice Brothers for life. I love my myspace, but I'm not 100% sure why. Anyway werd.
It was kind of a shitty show generally, on account of the crowd and the sound, but we were mad high. Also, I ran into the subject of Blue & Grey, and was way too high for that situation, and also fuck. But I was secretly hoping that would happen.
The Felice Brothers for life. I love my myspace, but I'm not 100% sure why. Anyway werd.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Loopy C
'Guys...I have escalated above humour.'
Pause.
Assorted Laughter.
'No, word man.'
'Man, I can make you laugh.'
'No, you can't make me laugh. I can only laugh at myself.'
'I'll make you laugh like the dickens.'
No Homo:
'But, would you do that shit with another dude?'
'Yeh man. I'd watch it.'
---------
'Back the fuck up Alex, I do not look like a tribal animal.'
when i turn 18, all i want for presents is moustaches. i want all you guys to get mustaches for me. Will you do that?
'We can just sit on a bench and drink Pilsner Light. Cause people wouldn't expect that. And I'd just be like fuck you it tastes good. its like you poured an old beer on the ground and god was like, bam, Pilsner light, and im just like, can i have some? and hes like check it.
Yeh. So generally, it's been a pretty good night, we wrote a new song, and then we bought some dopez and some sprite for our sizzurp. It was delicious and cool looking. Then an internet dude told Al Pal we might die so we all freaked out until we realized that there was really no way for that to happen. Then we all thought it was funny cause we just drank the wrong kind of shit (acetaminophen) for no reason. Then we realized maybe it wasn't that and that we were just really high. So I don't know, it was good.
Pause.
Assorted Laughter.
'No, word man.'
'Man, I can make you laugh.'
'No, you can't make me laugh. I can only laugh at myself.'
'I'll make you laugh like the dickens.'
No Homo:
'But, would you do that shit with another dude?'
'Yeh man. I'd watch it.'
---------
'Back the fuck up Alex, I do not look like a tribal animal.'
when i turn 18, all i want for presents is moustaches. i want all you guys to get mustaches for me. Will you do that?
'We can just sit on a bench and drink Pilsner Light. Cause people wouldn't expect that. And I'd just be like fuck you it tastes good. its like you poured an old beer on the ground and god was like, bam, Pilsner light, and im just like, can i have some? and hes like check it.
Yeh. So generally, it's been a pretty good night, we wrote a new song, and then we bought some dopez and some sprite for our sizzurp. It was delicious and cool looking. Then an internet dude told Al Pal we might die so we all freaked out until we realized that there was really no way for that to happen. Then we all thought it was funny cause we just drank the wrong kind of shit (acetaminophen) for no reason. Then we realized maybe it wasn't that and that we were just really high. So I don't know, it was good.
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