Appraisal

The reason that I'm sitting here at 8 am, by myself in a cafe, typing this shit (on a Wednesday morning that I have off from work no less) is due to the fact that some dip-shit is in my apartment doing an appraisal. Which leads me to the paranoid feeling that in the near future either my rent will be raised, or the place will be sold: the end result of both will cause me to move yet again. When I moved into my current apartment, my motto was "this will be the last time". So, lets briefly, vaguely, and indiscriminately run through my moving/living situation over the last 7 years since I initially moved to San Francisco. Yet another ME! post, so read it or fuck off and scroll to the bottom and just get the free track (its a real good one today).

1. After couch surfing for a few weeks, I found a rich young adult with a great place on Craigslist, that paid 2/3s of the rent on a shared unit in which I got more space than him(?). Although he was on par with some of the shittier drunks I've met, it was honestly rarely a problem since we didn't hang much, and he had money (drunks without money suck, duh). Everything was fine until some pill popping alcoholic piece of night trash from Long Beach moved up to go to SF State, asked to sleep at ours for a few weeks till she found a place, and ended up staying for five months. With every last dollar I could muster, I saved up to take a trip to Japan for two weeks, and upon my return I found that my roommate had gone on a bender, taken our "guest" to Vegas, married her, bought a house, and was moving out in two weeks.
2. Having just enough to cover next month's rent I hit up Craigslist like a fiend, and found a shithole with a roommate somewhat in my age range who did not need a deposit. Parts of my room went down at a 30 degree angle, but I took it out of desperation. Upon moving in I discovered that I'd be living with an unfixed pitbull that was afraid of everything and everyone (she probably needed glasses, but they don't make those for dogs. Actually, I stand corrected), and a roommate that did coke every other night and dated a stripper, that he lambasted for her career choice and alleged infidelity (although he brought home random bar skanks, and genuinely nice girls home on the regular behind her back). My friends hated coming over, and after 3 months I bounced,
3. To end up with some kid fresh into City College whose Dad had just jetted from his house to move in with some model. It was the kid's first time living alone, and anything seemed better to me than where I was before, until I got my bank statement a month later with 6 checks (totalling only $140) on it that I didn't write, made out to said kid, with my signature forged. He said he needed money to buy weed. So left that arrangement, and took a bunch of the nice furniture that he had at Daddy's place as a consolation prize.
4. Moved in to a crazy nice but sketchy place with a guy that grew weed (a lot of weed) inside, and a graphic designer. Best place ever: cheap rent, super huge, immaculate detailing, jacuzzi tub, free laundry, but everything I owned always smelled like weed, and everyone always thought I was high (and I kinda was as I was getting free pot).
5. Moved after a year and a half (longest place other than my childhood home that I've ever lived in) to get a place with my then girlfriend.
6. Moved everything into the unit upstairs after about half a year due to the downstairs neighbor being adverse to any music at anytime of day ever. I used to get blamed for my then upstairs neighbors' music all the time, in conjunction with my own, and she had the landlord's number on speed dial (I felt worse for him than anybody actually) and had a therapist girlfriend who used to like to confront me about how "I was restricting the freedom from flowing in their apartment". After the move up things from a neighborly perspective improved, but these were times of extreme mental anguish and paranoia.
7. After another 6 months moved again, across town, as the gf wanted a larger place with a yard.
8. After another 3 months gf and I parted ways. I spent two of the shittiest months of my life living with her while looking for a new place and then moving into the place which I'm in now, which I like.

I know that nobody cares. Still, I recounted all of it just to simply state that I don't want my rent raised, or my place sold. I am very broken in regards to the moving thing, and although it is a basically a constant ritual in my life, I'd like to break the cycle for a moment to save my back and my bank. I guess I could have have written about Phreek, and classic underground disco, like a proper disco blog, but seriously just google Phreek, P & P, and Patrick Adams and you'll find a wealth of more relevant info on other pages which'll be waaaaaaay better than some half ass plagiarism by me.

Phreek - I'm A Big Freak (R-U-1-2)

I'm Outta Here

Its getting to be time to leave when:
1. A stranger starts a conversation with you by saying "Don't you love this bar? I mean everyone here is so cool, right?", but they are not being sarcastic.
2. You need to exit the freeway in a couple miles, so you put on your blinker and the guy to your right speeds up specifically to block you, so you can't get over. So you chill for a mile and wait for another gap, put on your blinker, and the same guy speeds up again to make sure you can't get over. And now he's mad dogging you and staring through you with the intensity of the devil, and you just missed your exit (btw, I'd been driving in the same lane for 20+ minutes so I didn't cut the dude off earlier or anything).
3. You're at a party in a hotel room with 20 people smoking indoors with no windows open.
4. It takes 30 min. at a minimum to get anywhere you are planning to go to.
5. Your favorite mom and pop owned stores and restaurants from your childhood are now the GAP and Verizon, and you drove 30 minutes in traffic just to find that out.
6. Certain males and females about town (at night, and specifically downtown), rock a touch of fake blood across the throat or under the eye for the sake of fashion (or maybe Halloween nostalgia?). You also have to hang out and conversate with them.
7. Your childhood bedroom, now looks like the posted photo.
8. Your mom gives you a pamplet titled "Best Sex In The World: A Guide", and tells you to check it out...and you do.

I Heart Los Angeles!
Mitch Hedburg - Soda Pop

Look At Your Life

Drive, Eat, Drink, Drive, Wait, Drive, Wait, Smoke, Wait, Drive, Drink, Drive, Sleep. Then skin the shit out of your forearm skating a 4 inch curb in front of your parents house (so it looks like you took a cheesegrater to it), and think about the fact that you are a 28 year old man. Then write up a pointless blog post. Then sulk.
D.O.C. - The Grand Finale
Heaven 17 - Let's All Make A Bomb

Blog Vs. Vacation

Blog thought that he'd be getting some concentration and content, seeing as I'm on vacation and still in touch with computers, but his thinking is wishful at best. I need to be forced in front of a computer for a long period of time in order to really make this thing happen, and the only angst I'm feeling to get those psycho-lexical juices flowing has to deal with my family (which I'd prefer not to write about, but probably will. The apex of angst should hit this Friday, so we'll see how things play out).

Anyways, here are some endearing tunes by Jonathan Richman, who was previously the front man of the Modern Lovers (and is now still very relevant and poetic in his own solo right). I went on a date once at a Jonathan Richman show, and I thought that I dug the girl, cuz the show was good and she was smiling. But I was fucking fooled by the show, as I was just having a good time because of it, and not her, and it took a full hour after the show to shake that daze outta my brain and realize that she was a 'tard.
Jonathan Richman - A Higher Power
Jonathan Richman - Velvet Underground

Destroyer of Evil

I don't have much time for a post today, since I have my office holiday party (which they are doing at work, and during lunchtime this year, instead of at a restaurant or club or someplace that normal work places go to. I guess the T.E.T.s [tough economic times] strike again) to attend in a couple minutes. I'm expecting it to be a tad weird, as they will be serving us booze this year, for lunch, and then an hour later, we are expected to return to our desks, and actually do real work. I wouldn't say that I am planning on getting slammed at lunch today, but based on my past experience with open bars and awkward situations, I wouldn't be surprised when I'm on my third drink in twenty minutes (and I'm probably not the only one). Based on an office rumor I overheard, last year's holiday party was alcohol-free, due to the fact that someone threw up and embarassed themselves two years prior. Apparently the guard has changed, and this year, the fun committee or whomever plans these things, decided that it is again fine for us to drink liquor amongst other co-workers, but lets just limit it to lunch time, and then we can schedule legitimate business meetings directly following.

The tracks for today are from 80s Bronx electro producer Hashim, which in Arabic means "destroyer of evil" or "one who attracts women". In later forms of Arabic I can also be translated into the equivalent of the English word "sexy".
Hashim - Chateau Vie Remix (Castle Life)
Hashim - Al-Naafiysh Remix (The Soul)

Productive Waste of Time

It’s the pre-holiday week, and work has reached the grandeur of all-time fucking pointlessness. I’ve shown up on time, and I’m now alone in my cubicle staring at my calendar for today, which only lists one meeting of the Green Committee, now marked as cancelled. I did bust my ass to accomplish a couple things and meet some deadlines (which ended up being irrelevant in the long run) and now I am here trapped in purgatory, waiting desperately for the holiday break to begin. On days like this I seriously have no need to show up. I could just paste my cell phone number on my computer screen, and have two boxes for people to put paperwork, one which says “Done”, and another which says “You need me to actually do something with this, right?” The fact that I’ve trekked an hour in the rain to get to work today, solely to get paid to bitch about that aformentioned process on my blog (while listening to Italo and Eric Burdon jams on my Juster Hi-Fi Speaker System), and then write about taking cold showers, borders on the ridiculous.

So, what’s the deal with taking cold showers in the morning (cue Seinfeld bass line)? Seriously though, this is my topic for the day and I’m gonna take it there and back with some ferocious intensity. I think that something is fucked up with my hand (which is the water temperature tester for the shower) where it is incapable of helping my brain make the right decision not to enter. There have been a shitload of instances lately (and it’s much more apparent since it’s been colder out) where I’ve been entering the shower prematurely, and then have to linger shivering and anticipating the point at which the water will shift from cold to scalding (which can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes +). The worst part of the whole ordeal is that moment when you’ve entered and gotten half of your body or any part of your hair wet. At that point you are not allowed to turn back; you are officially the shower’s bitch, and it’s up to him to decide how much torture you are going to have to deal with before your flesh starts to bake from the radical temperature change. I mean I guess, you could technically, get out of the shower all dripping and stand there like a wet dog awaiting a more accessible atmosphere. Fuck that. That might even be a more miserable situation, and if you grab a towel to dry yourself off before re-entering the water, you are a pussy, plain and simple. One technique, which you can impart while trapped in the shower awaiting resolute temperatures (which doesn’t completely work), is to pee on your legs. Your pee will be lukewarm to warm at best, and may improve your situation around this area for 15 to 30 seconds (If you are a man, I wouldn’t suggest peeing up for the heat benefits, as there is something about taking your own pee in the chest or face area that just comes off as incorrect, even when its rinsed directly by water). Some people would consider that gross, but I think it’s safe to assume that all of you have peed in the shower at some point. If you get out of the shower to pee and then get back in, your priorities are seriously out of wack; it all goes to the same fucking place, and the process that applies to water washing your pee out of the toilet, works here as well. It would only get really gross if you use your shower as both a toilet and a shower regularly (as opposed to using a toilet at all), or if you have a large build up of hair in the drain, which is constantly getting filtered by the butt end of your human waste. Anyways, eventually the water does change temperature, and for about 10-20 seconds, it’s great. Then it passes the point of perfection, and within a split second jumps into the danger zone, where you have to either get out of the water stream (which is also cold) or adjust the temperature knob. My adjustments are usually jerked and unrefined, which accounts for the overcompensation in temperature, and suddenly I’m back where I started, with cold or lukewarm. At this point I am usually pretty fucking fed up, which allots me the mental/physical capacity to really take control of my situation; by concentrating on the exact degree specifications on the temp knob, I can pinpoint the precise spot for epic showering over the next couple minutes. Since we are on the topic of showering, wouldn’t it be nice if they streamlined the shower process across the board, so it’s more intuitive and constant. There have been multiple times where I have been at a hotel or a friend’s house, and spent 5 to 10 minutes just figuring how to get the thing not be at either extreme: piping or frosty. It’s almost an embarrassing experience, where you feel so fucking dumb that you can’t figure out an appliance that has only two knobs tops (and sometimes the bath/shower flip switch thing) which you’ve used almost every day for the entirety of your life.

I’m posting up some Italo business from Electric Mind for today. The B side of the 12”, is really the Dub Version of the A side, even though they name the B side something completely different, which I don’t get. Like, is it cool to be misled for 5 seconds, thinking you got a dub copy of an alternate track, but then you put the record on and it’s totally obvious that it’s the same?
Electric Mind – Pick Me Up (Can We Go)
Electric Mind – ZWEI (Dub Version) aka Pick Me Up (Dub Version)

The Fountain

Thanks to the wonders of science and research, I can finally take something that has haunted me my entire adult life and (possibly) turn it into a positive. I look young, to the point where the average doorman, assumes that I am A) not 21+ and B) not in possession of a legitimate ID, and therefore he or she must put me and my ID under the most scrutinous of tests. Staring, flexing, flicking, and black-light torture is subjected upon my poor ID, and I concurrently get asked every question under the sun, “what’s your birthday”, “what’s your sign, “what’s your driver’s license number”, etc… and then the follow ups to that process are baby face remarks, laughing, and utter disbelief. For the record I am not retarded or physically deformed, so I don’t look like the midgets from Time Bandits or anything. I used to get jealous of my friends who looked 30 when we were 18, but after some contemplation, my lot in my life ain't too bad. Conversely, I actually prefer to just continue to put up with all the shit and remain somewhat precocious looking than to be like Robin Williams in JACK. Apparently Danish scientists have found that people who look young for their age actually live longer. According to the following article it has something to do with these pieces of DNA called telomeres, which I am not going to explain, because you should know how to fucking read and follow links. Thanks to science, I can now confidently look forward to outliving most of my peers in solitude, and I now have some scientifically-bitchy condescension that I can insecurely recant to door-people during my nightly interview process.
ZZ Hill - I Created a Monster
ZZ Hill - That Ain't The Way You Make Love

The Emancipation Of Mimi

I woke up with a ton of ideas today that seemed very well formed initially, and I attempted to work them out in my head in that “snooze” period, which lasts exactly ten minutes (between when I push the snooze button on the alarm and go back to bed, and then when I wake up to the alarm again). I scrambled to an unopened envelope and wrote down “Fetish Skate Video” and “Mariah Carey” on the back thinking I’d be able to remember all the minute details. I am now at work, and they seem not only extremely hazy in comparison to the earlier dream format, but also less interesting/funny and waaaay more retarded. I’ll attempt to develop them anyway, as I am not looking to really do anything with my bloggings, other than get my fingers moving.

The first retarded idea dealt with the very homophobic world of skateboarding. Being openly gay and a into skateboarding is a definite no-no amongst most skaters (the majority of whom are probably in their teenage years, and very influenced by a number of things outside of their own mental capacity to make reasonable decisions). This is often a product of some working class, ignorant, macho, derelict, Pabst-blue-ribbon, flannel shirt type of vibe that a bunch of skaters tend to subscribe to. They say that statistically 1 out of every 10 men is gay; I’m sure that within skate culture the ratio is much lower, as it is not an activity that really speaks to a large variety of people outside of heterosexual males, and additionally its probably very intimidating for those who are outside of that category that it does interest (but within that category, it is at least racially very open; not so much across gender and sexual orientation). Regardless, it is fun to do, and all people like fun. So I was thinking maybe we need a gay skate video, with some pros (there must be a few who are secretly gay) coming out of the closet. It’d be a big Fuck You to skate culture. Sadly it’d probably end their careers, as I remember hearing rumors at skate spots from time to time about which pros are “confirmed gay” followed with some negative sentiments, and I figured that maybe the Gay Pride Skate Video would not work on its target audience. Instead, why not just go a couple steps beyond attempting to educate a few kids of the ignorance of homophobia (besides the vid would probably just become a target that they could use to reinforce what they already believe, unfortunately), and instead just blow a few minds by coming out with a hardcore fetish themed skate video, that will show some ripping: not only in the street, but in the club and the bedroom. It’ll be a place where skaters land and turn tricks, often in the same line. It’d showcase leather fetishes, circle jerks, cruising, all types of shit that skaters would generally be turned off of, but kids would totally buy it, thinking that they are gonna be really hardcore, for having a video with events and topics well beyond their sexual comprehension (Kind of like how it was cool to watch Faces of Death when you were 15, even though it is in no way enjoyable). Shit. In re-reading this BS, I don’t even know if I should put this out there, but if I don’t, I would have wasted a whole 30 minutes writing all of it up. If anything, it’s the homage to my thoughts on the astral plateau, which I cannot deny.

The second idea was “Mariah Carey” and beyond the name that’s all I can remember, which sucks because I’m pretty sure that I had a brilliant concept that would have put the fetish skate video idea into the trash can. I do remember having that song Touch My Body stuck in my head when I woke up (which was actually in a skate video). I also know that Mariah has an amazing Sanrio collection.
Fatback - Keep Your Fingers Out The Jam
Fatback - Want To Dance
Fatback - Get Ready for the Night

Huntsville

No sleep. Dark circles. Coffee. Work. Suck. Blues. I’m feeling real country today, because I’m wearing a denim shirt with pearl buttons and listening to Jim Ford. I’m just connecting on that mental plain, which is odd, as I have little country experience, outside of going to summer camp in Maine for 3 months when I was 9 and being involved in the Boy Scouts during my adolescence (not that being in a Boy Scout troop in Studio City is country, but we did go on a lot of trips to country type places, which will no doubt be blogged about at some point). Country is stereotypically floods, farms, animal shit, Wallmart, sheriffs, church, whiskey, beans, sagebrush, snus, wranglers, fires, smells, and a bunch of other shit that I really have no real experience with. Nowadays, country is IPods, online purchases, Nickelback, meth, and mini-malls.

More coffee. More Suck. Based on what I’ve already wrote, I should probably put up some country shit to draw a parallel between the content and the medium. But One Mans Problem is sometimes deliberately a letdown in multiple departments, and my denim shirt is just not enough incentive for me to tie things together. Screw it. I’ll do the obvious, and in doing so I will actually blow everyone’s mind with my self-proclaimed and pointless reverse-reverse logic. I’m having problems keeping my eyes open at the moment, and in re-reading what I have written up to this point, I realize that it’s time to stop writing and close this moment in blog history, so as to avoid falling asleep with my face on the keyboard with the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz key depressed. So here is the obvious: two dollar bin jams from Christopher Cross. Whether or not this qualifies as country or yacht rock is up to you to decide (fuck it, this is denim shirt music).
Christopher Cross – Ride Like the Wind
Christopher Cross - Sailing

Why Bother

Busy again, so go read Loose Shus' article on the cycle of suck. Essential reading, for the readers.

For the Downloaders:
Juicy Bananas - Badman
The Plugz - Reel Ten

Open Letter To Blog

Dearest Blog,
I am very sorry that lately I have not had sufficient time to contribute to you. My schedule at work has shifted so that I am actually busy, instead of just desperately seeking out ways to kill time while appearing assiduous. The odd thing is that I actually resent my superiors for putting a few large projects on my table with firm deadlines, as if my job is supposed to be comprised solely of me surfing the net and aimlessly wandering the building with a couple papers in hand as if I have "something to do". I understand that you have seen little sunshine and are not eating as regularly as you would prefer. I just wanted to let you know that this is not deliberate, and I still love you.

Faithfully Yours,

Hobo

P.S. I know that I could potentially feed, bathe, and play with you after work, but that would cut into my schedule of booze and skateboarding, and additionally go against the very nature of your conception (i.e. killing time while trapped at work). So hang in there, make sure to eat the stale corn nuts I'll occasionally toss down (and it'd be tactful not to forget to ration those), and please sweep all of your excrement into the corner of your coop.
Tha Dogg Pound - I Don't Like To Dream About Getting Paid
Tha Dogg Pound - One By One

Prog Fusion

There is this older dude at work (who is a jazz fusion bass player in a pretty heavy group in the bay area), that I’ve been trading music with. The guy has a story about the spiritual/cultural relevance of every band/artist he “turns me on to”, which usually starts with “This guy’s a heavy doper, but…” or “He put the rest of his talent into his arm if you know what I mean”. Dude holds the torch to Bitches Brew Era Miles Davis, Tony Williams, and John McLaughlin/Mahavishnu Orchestra; that’s his shit right there, and I’ve probably heard the same four stories about the three aforementioned guys ten times each. All of these stories last between 15 – 20 minutes, and while initially interesting, it’s a long time to spend in a hallway en-route to the copy machine, especially when you know all the details already. I’ve always thought it was somewhat rude to point out to an elder (like dad or grandpa) that I’ve already heard a story multiple times. Even at my relatively young age, my memory is already very fleeting, and I often make the mistake of recounting tales I find interesting or humorous multiple times to the same person, occasionally in the period of a week. I am likely destined to become an old shit with four stories locked and loaded that I can and will recount at any moment. Whether or not they relate to previous conversation will be completely irrelevant, and additionally I’ll likely pepper them up with lies to make my relatively mundane existence, and the events/culture of my generation, seem breathtaking and electric (like how the 60s and 70s seems to those of us born in the 80s). Of course it will be quite obvious that my tales are faulty upon the third or fourth listening, when I’m no longer the awkward guy that took a piss next to Ice T in an alley behind the Roosevelt Hotel (a very significant moment in my life), but now I’m telling children that I played bass on a West Coast tour for Body Count. To ensure a boring and awkward time for everyone in my company, the diarrhea mouth will likely flow, and while everyone else tactfully searches for outs, I’ll probably be fantasizing mid-thought about how enthralled everyone is with my Shakespearian fabrications.

This post goes out the dudes with intense music knowledge about shit that most people could care less about, and the long (although sometimes tangent and arduous) stories that accompany that knowledge.
Stanley Clarke - Concherto For Jazz/Rock Orchestra (Short Version)
Neil Larson - Futurama
Larry Young -The Moontrane

Tear It Up

My body is not as resilient as it used to be. 4 hours of serious skateboarding with a bunch of dudes who are 7 years younger than me has left me humbled, with my legs throbbing in pain (days later in fact). I could have been the token older guy and just benched myself in the corner at every spot smoking cigarettes and talking shit, but I felt the need to show these fucks that the slightly older generation still grips it and rips it (that’s just how I live my life). These dudes had video cameras and were intent on documentation, which brought out the mental beast: I could prove that I still rip and have the evidence laid down permanently on a gigabyte somewhere. I felt driven to show that the inkling of skate skills which are cryogenically frozen inside me could be reheated and released to course through my veins again. Well, if anything I’ve proved that I am not able to kick it in that environment anymore, the shredding to comfortably walking ratio is outnumbered by at least 20 times; not a particularly even trade. So I have to kick myself off of any dosage of heavy shredding and simply accept shred-light, which I guess is like making the change from regular Cola to Diet. Not quite as tasty and satisfying when it’s all gulped down, but absolutely necessary to ward off the devils that require its consumption.
Cameo - Please You
Bernard Fevre - Dangerous Mixture
X=R7 - XR7

Gormandize

What the hell is going on with people’s dietary choices. This little asian girl (a very FOBby one at that) told me that she was feeling sick today since all she ate yesterday was sugar. I laughed thinking that she just over indulged a bit, but then she explained that she had two donuts for breakfast, a pastry for lunch, and then had cake for dinner for someone’s birthday. That was all that she fucking ate yesterday. As shitty as that sounds, it caused me to ponder whether it is worse to ingest sweets all day long, or to omit from eating completely, and just drink beer and liquor continuously. One path gives you acne and headaches, and the other makes you into an irrational weirdo with nothing to vomit, that passes out and then wakes up with acne and headaches. Unfortunately I tend to favor the latter path every so often, and although it seems much worse on paper, it just sort of happens sometimes without much of a plan (it still seems better to me, even when I have my fingers rammed down my throat hanging over the toilet for five minutes, with nothing coming out of my mouth. For the record I’ve gotten better about not making that mistake). I think the sugar route tends to be more premeditated, but I guess it can also be coincidental (that only sugary products are available for consumption in a given day). People don't realize that sugar is a fucking drug, slanged out on a massive scale by huge corporations to the youngest of children, and the oldest of adults. Its effects, though not as jarring, last longer than something like nitrous or even salvia, and when used unremittingly, may be responsible for conditions like diabetes mellitus and for thousands of dollars to be wasted on oral maintenance. Take heed, sugar destroys lives.
Eazy - Project Funk
Eazy - Project Funk (Instrumental)

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

If I wanted to write a longer, sharper post today, I’d have to get some more coffee right now, and honestly I’d prefer to be a zombie for the rest of the day. I did the two cups thing yesterday, and my digestive system was not too pleased with my choice; I’ve already had one cup today, and then I had a bunch of dried fruit, so I really have to make sure that I make the proper dietary choices for the rest of the day to avoid a liquid surprise later (fiber and coffee is a deadly combo. I wonder why people don’t read my blog?). Anyway, I’m putting up some Gil Scott Heron tracks today from the album 1980 which he did with collaborator Brian Jackson. I took a little trip over to Wikipedia to see if I could dig up any ridiculous trash about Heron (which there was plenty), since he is hypocritically living the life that he prophesized and warned against in his earlier albums. I’d heard from friends that his recent show in SF was among the more negatively awe-inspiring they’d been to. The picture posted above, is of Heron at the aforementioned show in San Francisco, where he looks very similar to the Toad from the Wind in the Willows (see pic below. Also note, that in the pic, Mr. Toad is accompanied by a police officer: possibly for a cocaine-related charge or parole violation).

Gil Scott Heron - 1980
Gil Scott Heron - Push Comes To Shove
Gil Scott Heron - Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams)
Gil Scott Heron - Willing

Lurkage

Is it weird to go to a notorious gay/tranny/drag club by yourself (when you are straight), dance (also solo), drink large quantities of hard liquor, and remain silent the whole time? Oddly, it felt kind of inherent to me, which sadly and officially signals my return to lurker status. I’m not gonna sit back and let my friends (who have no interest in going out) prevent me from being detached and creepy in places that I don’t necessarily belong.

Lately I’ve been thinking deeply about my presentation on the dance floor. I really wanna know what I look like when I dance, cuz sometimes it feels so innate, but alas, it likely looks very unnatural. I’ve danced in front of a mirror in my room, and it did not look very fluid, so I doubt that when I am out that I am somehow channeling Crazy Legs, James Brown, and/or Gregory Hines (which is how it feels in my mind). Not that it matters, as the shirtless guy in the sport coat with the cowboy boots had no problem giving my ass a squeeze, despite my raucous movements. As violating as that was, it played into my insecurities like a college girl with an absentee father.
T La Rock - This Beat Kicks
T La Rock - Bass Machine

Undue Praise

How are you supposed to feel, when everybody thinks you are doing a great job and you think you are performing atrociously? I just received back a performance review (where I rated myself dead center or satisfactory) where my boss and the administration gave me all these stellar reviews stating that I’m surpassing my job description, and that I perform every task perfectly in a timely manner. They are giving me all this over-the-top praise that I do not deserve, and the message that it’s sending to me is that I am the golden child, who can do no wrong. So now I feel that I know longer need to watch my back in any way: I am invincible, and the workspace is now my play place. I’m gonna start looking at porn at work, openly writing blog, reading books at my desk, and additionally (just to pepper up my techy reputation) I’ll search out incurable computer viruses that I can ultimately unleash upon any shared drive. I’ll show these fuckers how satisfactory I can truly be.
Maurice - This Is Acid
Tyree - Acid Over
Armando - Downfall
Phuture - Acid Tracks
Dj Pierre - Box Energy
Sleazy D (Marshall Jefferson) - I've Lost Control

Music Isn't Free

No time for a legitimately frantic post today, I'm getting my balls torched by the demons at work. (Ups to Loose Shus for the last two tracks)
Information Society - Running (Dub)
Aphrodite's Child - Hic and Nunc
Aphrodite's Child - Altamont
Art Of Noise - Moments In Love (45 rpm)
Brian Auger & The Trinity - Pavane

Busy: Blog Hates

I've returned from a little vacation to my city of birth. It left me tired and sore, and now I've got an intense amount of work to do, so I'm just gonna have to get blog the literary equivalent of Arby's as I do not have the time to hash out a home-cooked feast. He's pissed, but still alive, breathing, and no longer starving. If only he would only stop whining; it's getting annoying, and daddy has business to take care of. Posting up some retarded-ass shit today: this group called Circuitry featuring Sam Bostic. Sometimes you just have to buy an album based on the fact that you think its gonna be horrible, which is why I bought Circuitry for $2. To a certain extent it is deplorable, but at the same time, really fun to listen to (its focused mainly on technology and freaky sex shit), and the album harbors the track name of the year: "My Baby Gives Good Phone". Sadly, the year in reference is 1983.
Circuitry - Computer
Circuitry - Seduction
Circuitry - My Baby Gives Good Phone
Circuitry - Driving Me Wild

Hiatus

Every single day of my life at work, this one guy says "Good Morning, Ryan" to me in a very pompous and proud manner, as if to suggest that he is the only cool, older, distinguished gentleman that graciously greets the surfs of the workplace (to set himself aside from the others, who could care less about us peons). Unfortunately that is not my name, and I know that I've missed the window to correct him, however I had no idea that he was even talking to me in the first place for a full two weeks. Once someone has made that particular mistake that many times, the fault falls into your lap if you decide to correct them that late in the game. Anyways, right above my desk, my name is displayed in at least a 72 pt. font size, so he is either oblivious or has a vision impairment of some sort. I must look like a furry ball of colors to him, which prompted me to thinking about how odd and psychedelic it must be to live in a world surrounded solely by tinted fuzzy spheres that talk.
Skying High - Getting Off On Your Loving
Musique - In The Bush (Remix)
CAM Stati d'Animo - Indian Feeling
CAM Stati d'Animo - Psycho Feeling
SPEED - Tremplin
Distortions Pop - Microchaos

Feline Fine (Sorry)

Blog has drained me. I’ve put everything into it and recouped absolutely nothing. Not once has blog bought me lunch, invited me to the bar, given me a ride, or lent me a dollar. I know for a fact that blog would not take a bullet for me, despite the fact that it survives solely on my nourishment. Blog even kicks me when I’m down, and spreads nasty rumors about me to strangers. To say the least, we have a complex relationship, based mostly on enabling. Blog encourages my mind to speak freely and in return I allow him to incessantly torture and plague my thoughts.

Music selection for today, is a couple themes from the movie Cat People (which was actually an erotic remake of the original from 1942), written by one of my heroes, Giorgio Moroder, with some vocal work done by another music genius, David Bowie (unfortunately the tracks featuring Bowie are not the strongest on the soundtrack). The plot to Cat People is off the hinges: The Cat People originated way back in time, when humans sacrificed their women to Leopards, who mated with them. Cat People appear similar to humans, but they must copulate with other Cat People, otherwise they turn into panthers after mating and then must kill in order to take human form again. Pretty harsh dilemma, especially when the population of Cat People is few and far between. The movie, Species, pretty much has the same plot, except they substitute Cat People with an Alien, and the soundtrack’s not that great, so my suggestion is to go with the ’82 remake.
Giorgio Moroder – Irena’s Theme
Giorgio Moroder – Leopard Tree Dream
Giorgio Moroder – To The Bridge

Worst Post Ever Pt. 2

Just to make this clear, the whole point of blog is to share music with people, and attempt to get a laugh in here and there. Any type of tirade against any subject is for the most part my caffeine addled brain sending some shit out without too much thought or recourse. I’ve lately been thinking about starting another blog: one which is completely vulgar, abstract, and offensive, and then having this one be PC, formulaic, self-promotional, and safe. Of course this would be a further step into pointless blog-dom; I don’t know how much more schizophrenic I want to get in cyber space, as my mind lately has been rather delicate. Part of this is due with the fact that the feedback I’ve received has either been overwhelmingly positive, or drastically negative. If everyone just said that blog sucks, then it’d be easy to just give it up and move on to something else that is equally as pointless. The only people that seem to “get it” are people that already know me, so obviously they are inclined to support me with positive feedback. I wonder, are they plotting against me. By simply encouraging me to open the caverns of my mind, knowing full well that I do not function well when it runs rampant, are they merely using me as tool to control the oxygen supply on Mars. I never should have done that appointment with Recall, as it is now tough to tell if I am living in reality or not. Kuwato and the rebels claim to need what’s inside my head, the cab driver has five kids to feed, and my wife (or is it?) is pleading with me to take a pill which will act as a symbol of my will to return to reality.
Bits & Pieces - Don't Stop The Music
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Are You Ready
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Funky Fever
Kenny Clairborne and the Armed Gang - Say Yeah

PLAYER ERROR!

This about as self promotional as I get, but... My newest mixtape Player Error is up on the Beat Electric Blog right now. This blog is far superior to mine, both in terms of readership and the consistent quality/rarity of tracks they post, so I'm pretty juiced to have my mix up there.

Check out and download Player Error here.

The Complete Package

I’m clearly in dire need of more caffeine. I’ve been listening to disco all morning, drinking coconut juice, and staring at a blank computer screen, as a result of last night’s love affair with scotch. Scotch pretty much guarantees that the next day is gonna suck, but that doesn’t seem to matter to me, as I clearly have no foresight into any resultant consequences; everything has got to be pleasure now, now, now. My partial dedication to Thursday night hedonism is both impulsive and retarded, and now my eyelids feel heavy and my mind sluggish. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s probably that just because someone offers you something free does not mean that you have to take it.
The music selection for today is two Johnny Wakelin tracks from the album Reggae, Soul, and Rock n Roll. Usually I try not to post up a picture of the featured artist, as I find it a bit more fun to search out some picture that relates more abstractly to the sentiment of the post, but this guy is such a goofball that I kind of have to post up at least a few pics (the top one is from http://www.johnnywakelin.co.uk/, which is the funniest/saddest site I’ve seen in some time. Anything that highlights 3 semi-hits from 30 years ago with a current pic is getting into some pretty laughable territory). The album has one of the coolest logos of all time, which is supposed to be some dude in a beanie dancing with a lady (although it totally looks like he’s taking her to the bone-zone; check the expression on his face). I’d first heard the track In Zaire on this comp that Jarvis Cocker put together a couple years back, and I never really put together an image of the singer in my head. It’s weird how you can hear a song and not assume that the singer is gonna look a certain way. Then when you see a picture of the dude, you are absolutely astonished by the way he looks for some reason, despite the fact that his looks are merely an extension of the way he sounds. I mean when you hear some guy like Tony Benet or even Afrika Bambaataa, they are dead ringer visually to complement the aural experience. Why I was surprised to see some huge white weirdo in a cowboy hat singing this shit is uncanny, since that’s exactly what he should look like.

Oh yeah, fyi, by now I’ve had so much coffee that I am basically in the future, and my pet turtle seeks solace in the drains.
Johnny Wakelin – Reggae, Soul, and Rock n Roll
Johnny Wakelin – In Zaire

Blog's Position On Blog

In posting music, I often wonder if there are rules or no-no’s within the music-geek blog community. Obviously these rules can and are broken constantly, but I’m sure that certain types of blog activity is frowned upon and mocked by the senior bloggers and purists. In skateboarding (and life; deep I know), you can pretty much do whatever you want on your board that is physically possible: push mongo, do ho-hos and handplants in the parking lot behind Sears (that’s actually pretty cool), launch benihannas, and do kickflip sex-changes. Any of the aforementioned tricks would probably result in a harsh mocking by seasoned skaters, although this trick degradation is solely a social construct. God or some underlying universal force did not will any of these things to be good or bad; a couple influential people did. So I started to wonder if I’m currently breaking any of the unwritten blogging rules myself. Here are a few things that I occasionally do which might make the list:
1. Repost tracks that I’ve downloaded off other people’s blogs. I don’t do this too often (and especially not if the track is tagged. How embarrassing, right). If I seriously can’t find the record, the track has a high sample rate, and it’s a stone cold jam, I will commit this crime. Whatever dude, I’m like a music blog Robin Hood.
2. Post up shit that I’ve uploaded from CD. Doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but, some folks claim that unless you record it from the original vinyl it doesn’t count. While I do feel that having the original vinyl copy is crackerjack (I got that term from the Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus by the way, in searching for a synonym for “excellent”), I don’t think it is absolutely necessary. Besides, if you are actually concerned with supporting the artist, it’s probably better to buy the CD brand new from the store (if it exists), as some of that money might actually make it back to them (depending on how they negotiated their deals).
3. This is a music blog, right. So what the fuck am I doing whining, complaining, praising and ranting about non-music related things, like Laundry and Haircuts. I should be whining, complaining, praising, and ranting about music solely, as my music related opinions matter! They do, right?
4. Posting the same artist’s stuff over and over again. For example I’ve posted a lot of Bohannon, and I’m gonna post more in this post, and I plan to post even more in the future. What can I say, I’m a fan, and although I should space his shit out more, I’m super impulsive.
5. Posting really obvious pop music, that everyone knows and has heard a billion times. I haven’t done this too much yet, but I’m sure I will be posting up some Madonna in the future.

Shit, that’s all I can think of. My blog may be in the red, but it’s not the worst (I could provide some links to some of the worst I’ve seen, but that’d be fucked up and subjective), although One Man’s Problem is still completely un-respected and unknown, which is fine. Still, I’d like others to tell me the rules of blog and what else I am doing completely wrong. On the converse, here are some of the things that I see constantly on other blogs, which I feel violates music blog convention:
1. Posting up music at a low sample rate. Yeah, I fucking love it when the drums (and everything else), which are normally thunderous and heavy, sound like metallic high frequency garbage. Plus I use Serato (which I will likely get hated on hard for using. Is it still lame to use Serato, when I record all my vinyl at the highest sample rates to disc, and I get to use other MP3s, some which I will likely never find anywhere on vinyl in my lifetime, as well? I know the answer is yes [that it is in fact lame as hell], but my back is likely to be in better shape at the end of the day) which means that there is no way I’ll ever keep or play out anything from your blog (which may be your intent, to just tease, expecting that if you like the track enough you’ll go out and find it, which (if that is your intent) I respect (sort of, but still it’s a bit greedy). In that case, why not just go the extra distance and just put up snippets of the track, to really tease, ensuring that a false MP3 copy will never be misused. I’m sorry for the overload of parenthesis used in this passage, but my writing is very fragmented, and I want to accurately include all that shit.
2. Posting twice a month, or less. Actually, I think less than four times a month is kind of pathetic. This is relatively self explanatory, unless you are dropping serious amounts of blog-age in those posts, to tide peeps over till the next one. I understand that you are a busy person and maybe don’t have time for blog. If that is the case, then you DON"T have time for blog: give up, as nobody cares about you or your blog anyway (just as nobody cares about me, or my blog, and yet for the time being, I persist).
3. People who post up all the new 12”s and singles which are being released in the present. I know it’s tempting as there is some good stuff coming out (most of which sounds like it could’ve been released in the late 70s and early 80s, which is bittersweet I guess) but nonetheless, these dudes stand to benefit from the money that music dorks like me would normally spend on their output, as opposed to the money that I’ll now spend on something else, since I just downloaded a high quality MP3 off your blog. This maybe the case to post the low quality MP3, but I feel like many will still be satisfied with the free, yet crap quality version. Just post up the snippet, and/or shout it out and link to the Juno download or some online shop. If you are cool with the artist and they give you permission to post it up, or if they already offer a free approved download via their own label or site, that’s justified also. I know some blogs are popular (unlike this one), and may actually have the power to promote the artist, song or album, but I also know that in my case, if the track is just sort of cool (as opposed to essential heat), and I already have the high quality MP3, I’m not gonna be buying a hard copy.

I could go on, but I’m a total hypocrite and I’ve likely already done everything that I’m speaking out against, or will in the future (perhaps in this very post; irony is a strong theme here at One Man’s Problem). Besides I’ve already spent the whole morning writing this, and I’m sort of out of decent ideas. So going on would mean more babble; live and let die.
Bohannon - Dance Your Ass Off
Bohannon - The Groove I Feel
Bohannon – Party People
Mandonna – Into The Groove
Doris D and the Pins – Shine Up

Dribble

Since I'm not at work, I'm basically breaking my own rules by putting up a post today. So instead of thinking/writing out a real post, you'll just get these tracks (I highly doubt anyone is complaining). I'm well aware that the Mutiny tracks kind of sound like they were recorded in a cave, and instead of blaming me, you can blame recording engineers Bruce Hensal (Miami), Neal Teeman, and assistant engineer Hugo Dwyer (NYC), as well as Stanley Kalina who mastered the record on the CBS Discomputer (TM) System.
Gary Wright - My Love Is Alive
Mutiny - Will It Be Tomorrow
Mutiny - The Ballad of Capt. Hymbad

There's Too Many Words

It must suck to visit blog with the sole intention of downloading some tunes for free and having to scroll down through all the pointless text to get to the real meat. In our current, fast-paced, instant gratification world, One Man’s Problem does not always instantly gratify, and I assume that the average net surfer would tire of the extra 5 to 10 seconds they are wasting with their finger depressed on the clicker. I mean this in all seriousness (I know that I have a penchant for sarcasm which doesn’t always translate well in type, since it’s hard to enunciate text; you have to use CAPS, underline, or color the word, and even that doesn’t always drive your point as intended. There was a Mr. Show episode where David Cross writes to some cereal company about how much he LOVES their cereal, so they keep sending him free cereal boxes, and he’s all pissed that they don’t get it. Conversely, once a person gets accustomed to the sarcasm in print, it’s also tough for them to ever take you seriously again. I guess I’d still prefer the latter) and the main criticism I've received regarding blog (other than "its a pointless waste of time") is that the posts are too long. I guess in order to somehow focus the downloader’s attention I could post the link within the text (color-coded of course, otherwise, they’d get flustered and just 86 the site, without free tunes), so they’d probably have to at least read that particular sentence. I could pepper up the sentence with either some radically interesting factual information (like every other blog, and only if it exists), some bizarre fiction about the artist, or create some fake internet award to suck the reader in and procure a click. I was going to provide examples, but I’m over it, as the track You Can Do It by the band Five Special, who I’m posting up today, is totally uninteresting, aside from the fact that they were produced by Ron Banks of the Dramatics, older brother to band member Brian Banks. Then I found out that shortly after recording the dub version of the aforementioned song, You Can Do It (Dub), band member Steve Harris photographed the world’s first unicorn in a barn adjacent to his house just outside of Dearborn, MI (this was quickly covered up by the FBI). If you are reading this now, you are the 1,000th viewer of this post, and you are subject to a $10,000,000 Dollar Cash Prize: Click here to claim your prize, Five Special – Sexy Lady.

Metaphors

It always happens that just when I think that I’ve heard every amazing cut put out by a certain artist (and I’m ready to close the book) I get nipped inside the ass (as opposed to on the exterior), and find myself listening to the same song on repeat for an hour straight. I picked up a copy of Here, My Dear the other day, and I had to again confront the fact that Marvin Gaye had somehow tapped into this cosmic sexual vortex of understanding. Some shit that despite race, gender, etc… 95% of English speaking people can probably feel and connect with. I guess you could probably speculate the sentiment of the song without understanding the lyrics, as he definitely has “the voice”, but it’s not within my realm to be able to surmise a person’s reaction/connection without them having the necessary language skills (and they’d probably just assume all his songs are love songs, which is not the case). I’ll leave that to a pro to figure out, and besides it’s completely irrelevant to this post, and again I’ve gotten off topic. Fuck. This particular album is the summation of Gaye’s divorce cut on wax, a somewhat cathartic outcry that evokes the hidden beauty of pain, rejection, and anguish (not that doing that is a first or anything, a large chunk of pop music deals solely with this type of stuff). Outside of being a performer and vocalist, Gaye was probably just as retarded and insecure as the rest of us, and worse, he was an arrogant, delusional, coked up asshole, whom in his last days (according to http://www.findadeath.com/. Seriously, that’s where I went to research this post) was known to frequently don a bulletproof vest out of fear that he was being stalked by murderers (The article also mentions that while staying at his parent’s house right before being murdered by his father [irony], “He was strung out, doing loads of cocaine and spent hours watching porn videos in his bedroom). It’s not that his lyrics are especially keen either, but as Coach McGuirk puts it in the above video, “It's called creative use of words. It's like poetry, you know? Robert Frost. Stopping by the woods. On a snowy fucking evening. That kind of shit. But it’s my poetry, it’s the everyday man’s poetry. Alright, cuz we can’t find good metaphors like the woods, or the snow, or the horse, or that kind of stuff.”
Marvin Gaye – Time To Get It Together
Marvin Gaye – Falling In Love Again/When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You (Reprise)
Marvin Gaye – Is That Enough

Nerd Out

Time to turn this crap back to being sort of music related for at least a post. Enough about urinals and tools for the elderly. To either the delight or chagrin of the reader/downloader, I'm putting up some 70s jazz fusion today. I just picked up a record that kind of blew me away the other day, and I'm gonna put up my three favorite tracks from the album. The album in question, is the first album from The Eleventh House (called Introducing Eleventh House), which features Larry Coryell on guitar, Alphonse Mouzon on Drums, and this guy Mike Mandell on synths and piano. The bass player and trumpet player are on point too, and I don't remember their names or have the record in front of me (and I'm too lazy to look them up), so sorry to those two dudes who aren't getting some just props. For all the nerds out there, Mike Mandell mainly used the ARP Odyssey on most of the cuts here and that thing serenades the future and fucks it in space. I don't have much else to say, I'm busy and tired, and if thats a problem you can all suck it.
Eleventh House - Birdfingers
Eleventh House - Yin
Eleventh House - Right On Y'all

Low Brow

When you use a shared bathroom with the same people 5 days a week (and a large group of people), you start to understand the high traffic times for restroom usage, and whom to avoid in a restroom tete-a-tete if at all possible. I know not to use the bathroom between 12:30 and 2, as it’ll likely be crowded and/or smelly, with few or no stalls available. All the shit I'm about to talk about relates directly to experiences in the Men's bathroom, as I have very little experience in the Women's arena, except when I'm drunk at a bar, the Men's room is full, and I really have to go. I’m of the disposition to prefer a certain extent of restroom solitude (this does not necessarily mean that I have to be alone), especially in the case of the dreaded Number 2. I don’t want to share that type of anguish/embarrassment with another in the same situation in close proximity, and I don’t find the restroom a good place to bond for any reason imaginable.

There are certain people that I’ve learned to avoid in the restroom, based solely on their interior etiquette. These are all people that I have no problems dealing with outside of the lavatory, but once inside they change drastically into vulgar, insensitive, classless weirdos who have no regard for the fact that others are also relieving themselves. I’ll provide a few situations and examples. A small wiry man, who resembles actor Wallace Shawn from The Princess Bride (the one that was in cohoots with Andre the Giant, see pic), does this thing where he goes to pee (and this guy probably pees about once every 45 minutes so you kind of have to time your pee around his, since he’s always in there), and performs this odd ritual. He always uses the urinal against the wall, and then while peeing, puts his arm up on the little wall that divides the urinals and stares down the line at the other three urinals, which breaks every rule in the fictional urinal etiquette handbook (I think there was a Curb your Enthusiasm episode that got into this territory once). You are not allowed to make eye contact and stare at anyone else’s dick or face while you are peeing. Additionally, you can’t enter another man’s stall/personal space, and the arm over the divider breaks that contract. Plus, if you are looking at me, that means you are not looking at your dick and monitoring where your pee is going. So you could potentially be peeing on the wall, your pants, or your shoes.

Another couple of guys like to have conversations with me and others in the bathroom. I find this to be a very grey territory, and I’ll try to illustrate what is okay and what is not. Two friends or acquaintances enter the bathroom talking, pull up at the urinal (still talking), and they both piss and continue their conversation. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this is okay, and I don’t really know why. It just feels okay, and why let piss get in the way of your stream of consciousness or flow. Piss is flow; just let it combine with the overall flow of the convo (rhymes!). New example: one guy is pissing, the other friend or acquaintance enters during the guys’ piss and starts talking to him and starts pissing as well, in an adjacent urinal. Whether or not this situation is valid depends on the depth of their friendship. You have to be pretty close with someone to talk to them mid-piss (literally as well; you cannot pull up to a urinal and talk to someone over the head of someone else pissing in between); exemptions being a bizarre event just occurring, an emergency, or maybe you are strangers both drunk at a baseball game (and even that is iffy). What is completely off limits, is talking to someone mid-piss that you know but have not achieved a friendship-type of relation with. Not Fucking Allowed! Even worse, giving out work assignments or even talking about work in a manner where one has to pay attention mid-piss, is un-fucking-warranted. What do you want me to do, write it down with my dick in cursive? This has happened to me multiple times in the bathroom and by the same two offenders that just don’t seem to get that this kinda shit should not go down ever, for any reason. One guy even pulled up to piss, farted, and then instructed me to put something together for him. Because of people like this, I need to be spry and alert when I enter the bathroom, and use all of my faculties (literally, waka waka waka) to be quick and avoid any awkward relation.

I don’t think that people really talk to each other in a public restroom while shitting. I haven’t witnessed it recently, and I don’t even want to get into it. It’s always rude and wrong, but it has the potential to be way funnier in certain contexts (the last one I can remember is two drunk idiots in an airport restroom yelling at each other, with some poor unrelated guy was trapped in the middle of their two stalls). On the contrary, if you have to use a urinal trough, all rules are null and void and guerilla tactics can be applied. You can talk, yell, eat, text someone, talk on the phone, stare at someone’s dick, pee on others, and even take a shit into it if you please. The trough is the one of the lowest of the civilized male human bathroom experiences (other than being the janitor that cleans and maintains it, and at least he/she gets paid), so it can therefore be treated with the most low brow behavior possible: either to enact revenge on the bastards that cheaped out and installed a trough in the first place, or as a haven for all the creeps that already break all the aforementioned public restroom rules.
Omni feat. Conni Draper - Out of my Hands
Kebekelektrik - War Dance (Greg Wilson Edit)

Brilliant Observation

I was watching a lady with a walker today, and I noticed that the tennis ball is basically the standard issue accessory to use as a glider for the back legs of the apparatus (I already knew that, but it was reaffirmed). Does a brand new walker, come with a free Pringles can of tennis balls, or has this just been adopted by the elderly, as some insider trick (like how scratch DJs used to [and some may still] balance their needles by putting a penny on top of it)? The tennis balls on this lady’s walker were extremely faded and dilapidated, which was in complete contrast to her rather expensive attire. I would expect her to have the crème de la crème of tennis balls adorning her walker, but this was not the case, and to top it off, she was out in public (as opposed to in a home or hospital, i.e. safe havens for the elderly). This poses the question of whether new tennis balls function better, worse, or the same as worn down ones on a scale of walker glide-age. I mean how often do you see a walker with that fresh neon pop from a pristine box of Penns? Hardly, I’d assume, but I hardly ever see walkers, so it’s a double rarity for me. By now, it'd be wise to market a more durable walker glider type of ball or pad, and the product is out there, but the final commodity seems kinda retarded, as they’ve designed it to look exactly like a fucking tennis ball (it even has those lines that tennis balls have which doubtfully has any positive impact on the traction, see pic).

Although an effective tool, the tennis ball cheapens the image of the walker and its inhabitant, and its time for a change! If you drove a decent Acura, I don’t think you would choose to deck the rims out in protective Styrofoam, when there are a ton of better looking and more durable products out there for rimmage. Well, maybe when it comes to walkers the rules of high school apply: if everyone else is doing it, it just becomes acceptable and often desirable. I guess the elderly community is very similar to the kids in that show the Hills in that respect, in that their walker decisions are highly influenced by peer pressure and homogeny. I think it’s time to step it up and create the high end, classy version of the walker tennis ball. Market it to all the cool kids at the elderly home, and start the frenzy.
Supermax - Fly With Me (Ichisan Edit)
Eddie Drennon - Disco Jam
Adonis - To Far Gone

Parasites

If you’ve ever recorded a mixtape as a single track (as opposed to cutting it up into multiple tracks, which is way cooler, and I still haven’t figured it out), it is often very surprising and saddening to see what happens as your mix comes up in iTunes. There are literally hundreds of thousands of single track CDs and mixes that have already been uploaded to the Gracenote Media Database, so not only has a single track CD to the exact time specification of your mix already been uploaded, but it is also likely on the fruit boot tip. The new mix that I just recorded came up as Cosmic Girl – To the End of the Earth, but luckily I forgot to delete the last 20 seconds of silence which extended after the end of the final record. After deleting it and bouncing it to disk, it now comes up as Deejay DAI – The Platinum Mix 2009; a significant improvement but not quite the marketing/notoriety that I’m looking for with a Hotthobo affair. I don’t want Deejay DAI blowing up on account of my selection, and I’d like to think that I have the Midas touch (although I have yet to use it). Maybe I should be optimistic about the mislabeling of my mixtape. Perhaps just mentioning Deejay DAI on blog will somehow boost my page views significantly, and we can have a symbiotic relationship where I burrow into his skin and function like that hookworm that you get from wading in urinals in Papua New Guinea which cures your allergies. As a hookworm, in the end I will multiply and conquer Deejay DAI, as explained by Dr. Hotez in the hyper-linked article above, “If a kid is infected with 25 hookworms, he’s being robbed of his daily iron requirement, and because the worms suppress the immune system, they can increase the host’s susceptibility to diseases like AIDS and malaria,”. I guess it’s not symbiotic when I end up killing him in the end (but at least I sort of win).

Moving on I’ve realized that I need to somehow identity-proof blog, so that real world interactions are not traced back to me personally, and so I am ultimately not fired from my job and judged by people that do not know me well. I've alluded to this in earlier posts, and with all the shit I talk about all the time I waste at work, it’s probably best that people at work do not read blog, as the post times (which are well documented) validate the fact that I often spend about as much time crafting this as I do doing whatever it is I’m paid to be doing. This means removing any promotional linkage on facebook, myspace, gmail, etc., and although this absolutely breaks my heart, it is necessary for my survival to go back into the depths (and let the fame come naturally. It will, I guarantee it!). I was told by a friend to also double check that blog’s filthy mug does not pop up when you google your real name (which I checked, only to find that some idiot with the same name as me has the worst Twitter page of all-time. Twitter never did anything for me unless it was some lunatic hobo lurking the streets with a Bluetooth and PDA. Then it’s kind of amazing). In that sense I am in the clear, but maybe like 4 people at work do know my DJ handle, and although there is virtually no chance of them ever googling that to find any information for any reason, the possibility does exist, which has given me the fear. Before you judge me, take into account that you are currently reading this and are hopefully entertained by my tales and logic (or lack thereof). I work free for you, boss, and although you have no creative control over the final product, you can always post a comment (I always get giddy when I see a new one), and you can download of bunch of tunes at high bit rates. So stop thinking about others, and get selfish for a sec: One Man’s Problem benefits you.
Charlie - Spacer Woman
Doris Norton - Personal Computer
Devo - Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA

Post Halloween Post

In the wake of Halloween, I’d be outright lying if I claimed that I acted appropriately around random strangers, or even my friends. I feel downright filthy for some of the things that I thought of, performed, exploited, and viewed last weekend, and from what I can tell, my behavior was in some way more controlled than some of my incorrigible Bay Area peers. I think you are allowed a hall pass of sorts, to traverse to the wild side during these festivities, which becomes more and more endurable and valid following large amounts of liquor, and the mental confidence/insanity that a costume can furnish your psyche. Regardless, it is still important to hold on to a fraction of decency in these situations, and not completely lose track of all intuition, humanity, and ethics. If you outright lie, cheat, or defraud a friend (or stranger) on Halloween, the “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” mentality does not excuse your behavior. Here is a short and vague list of a few things that I personally did this weekend, which make me feel vile in retrospect:
1. Fabricated a lie because I thought it was funny. Instead, it just made everyone worried and doubtful.
2. Danced very lewdly next to a girl that actually seemed to enjoy my company (at least until then) ultimately ushering her disappearance, and likely grossing her out.
3. Said or screamed some very blunt and tasteless things to get a reaction.
4. Lit a cigarette backwards.
5. Used a computer inappropriately to entertain people.
6. Hocked a loogie on a guy by accident. He was cool with it (thank god).
7. Generally suffered from poor judgment decisions for 3 days straight.

So in order to make up for my shit behavior, I need to tip the scales in the opposite direction for the next 3 days, to correct the evil balance opposition I’ve created. Maybe I’ll go feed a baby deer in the forest, tip really big at the coffee shop, or listen to my mom give me her top three picks of graduate schools for marketing or account management. I’m sure I could be a little more valiant than that, but at least it’s a good start.

Another way I’d like to give back is by posting up one of my favorite party jams, The Cars That Go Boom by L’Trimm. A great song, about Bunny D and Tigra being infatuated with guys that spend a lot of time and cash on their car stereos; until this point, I don’t think that that specific group of guys had really gotten their due. I never understood the name, L’Trimm, but I did always think it sounded super cool. Trim is a slang word that can mean either an attractive girl, having sex with a girl, or vagina. I’ve occasionally heard Bay Area homies proclaim “I pulled hella trim last night” and high fiving, or throwing the rock while riding the bus. I don’t think that L’Trimm were attempting to evoke the slang meanings of the word trim in their moniker, and I would assume that the aforementioned usage of the term “trim” came later on in the mid 90s. Plus there are two Ms in Trimm, so maybe that lends itself to an entirely different meaning all together. I’d have to ask someone who was active in the club scene in Miami in 1988, and I’m not that resourceful.
L'Trimm - The Cars That Go Boom
Eddie Trauba & M.M. Greco - Macaroni Radio
Human Egg - Love Like This

Too Toasted To Post It

One Man's Problem is giving you tomorrow's post today (sans any type of jarbled pronouncements or passages and straight to the meat). Blog is progressive.
Jerry Williams - Crazy Bout You Baby
Fresh Band - Come Back Lover
Patrick Cowley - Sea Hunt
Sweat Band - We Do It All Day Long
Sweat Band - Body Shop

Torture your Co-Workers

I work in a cubicle, and I listen to music at work on speakers, which means that everyone around me has to listen to it as well. They are cheapo computer speakers, which look like they are from the mid 90s (the brand is JUSTer, and they claim to be a HI – FI Speaker System), and they definitely aren’t anything great, but they get the job done considering that I can’t exactly bump. I don’t use headphones at work as they are much too restrictive: I can’t hear people walking down the halls, which is essential to me minimizing incriminating windows hastily. Plus they start to hurt my ears after an hour of pumping up the jams. Lately I’ve been listening to either disco/boogie/italo, stoner metal, or Wu – Tang, which means that all 3 people that work directly in my cubicle, and the 4 others in the adjacent one are listening to the same shit. Every other day, this one girl tells me to turn it down, but I am so nice and polite to her that it’s not really an issue; she asks me to turn it down simply because it annoys the shit out of her at that moment, and she tolerates it the rest of the time, so I really can’t complain.

I’ve been pondering how the music that I listen to in my cubicle, while I write these posts and sometimes do actual work, reflects what people think of me; specifically my sexual orientation, my habits, my lifestyle, how I spend my money etc. If I was Joseph or Gina Normal, and I heard a majority of disco coming from a specific office space, I’d probably assume gay without much hesitation. The Wu – Tang stuff, which is probably not appropriate for work, equals stoner with low ambition, and the stoner metal stuff obviously fits in a similar category. Which poses the question of which is more high brow? Who gets the promotion: the white guy at his desk, dressed in appropriate casual work gear listening to Wu, or a similar fellow listening to Electric Wizard? This may be rhetorical (but probably neither).
Pierre Henry - Psyche Rock
Dusty Springfield - Thats The Kind Of Love I Have For You (Disco 3000 Edit)
Dinosaur - Kiss Me Again (Original Edit)

Also, the pics in the post don't correspond to any of the content, and maybe I could have held off, untill I could relate something to car surfing, but I am very impulsive and have very little patience. I guess car surfing is kind of like ghostriding the whip for white people. Its both dangerous and entertaining, and if you have ever seen a ghostriding accident live (which I have, in the Fillmore on Fulton and Webster, and nobody died or got seriously injured, so it was officially hillarious) you'd know what I'm talking about. I know there are a ton on youtube.

Oh god, it goes nowhere

I’m not sure if I’m currently depressed or just bored, but my current lifestyle seems to be permeated by both. I don’t mean to lay a sympathy trip on anyone but, the successful, fulfilling, enticing life that we all dream of as kids sort of fades sharply when all you have to look forward to after a grueling day of work, is a 24 of Pabst, and a trip to the Laundromat. You can only put off that Laundromat trip so long until you have no boxers or jeans left; when your only option is to raw dog it in a pair of dress pants with mismatched socks, it’s time to do the fucking laundry whether you feel up to it or not. The Laundromat down the street from my house is basically a homeless shelter that closes at 10pm. There is literally a 2 x 3 foot crevasse between where the rows of washers end and the dryers begin, that is usually occupied by a bum (unrelated, but I just looked up the word “bum” to see if there were any cool synonyms, and while I was only supplied with the word “tramp”, the dictionary did grant me with a definition and sentence to illustrate the meaning/usage of the world, which is real gold: “Meaning: a homeless wanderer who may beg or steal for a living. Usage: I feel sorry for bums and occasionally give them money”). I assume that it is quite warm in there, but it’s also jackhammer loud, which likely makes sleeping near impossible. I guess part of being homeless, is learning to acclimate to your surroundings. As a relatively well-to-do member of tax-paying society, I can basically just buy my way into sleeping relatively comfortably, and even then I still do not sleep well regularly. Hearing any type of noise is legitimate ground for my mind to focus, ultimately keeping me actively awake (I don’t think I’ve ever passed out during a movie, except maybe out of sheer exhaustion). Part of being a good vagabond, is possesing the ability to sleep in any context.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, so I’m just gonna stop with whatever I was attempting to go for. Any good writer knows that it’s wise to ditch your efforts when you’ve procured absolute crap, but it’s hard for me to do that when I’ve spent a full twenty minutes developing a topic (even when it’s pointless). Additionally I'm not a good writer and it’s not like I have anyone to impress. Since I’ve accomplished relatively little (in terms of tangible things; I guess blog isn’t exactly tangible, but you can read it) if I were to get mauled and raped to death by a mob of stray leopards today, all that would actually stand out to embody my life is a 4 month old blog, and a couple mixtapes (and the fact that I was mauled and raped to death). In death, would my gibberish, suddenly be exalted (god, I hope not)? I’ve read portions of a couple books by famous dead writers, which should not have ever been published, but were solely based on the pulse of interest that accumulated with the arrival of their tombstone (usually someone finds a bunch of letters or a manuscript discarded among their belongings, and without any hesitation publishes it. Then I impulsively buy that book used, since I like the writer, read a little bit, and my image of this impeccable literary giant is diminished as a result.). For me, blog is probably the thing that should not be out there, but unfortunately I do not have any polished work that stands diametric to my prattle. Also this fantasy that I'm pondering where you feel completely insignificant, but then you die and suddenly you do matter (you fucking showed them!), is the trite fuel of millions of studio apartment losers and impulsive suicide cases. Worst post ever, sorry.

Also it was my intention to post a bunch of depressing ass music today, but since I'm at work, I only have mostly dance music, which doesn't exactly translate the sentiments of the post. I was able to dig up something non-dancey, but I wouldn't exactly consider it depressing, as much as inspired by fantasy, since all the music posted today by keyboard whiz Bo Hansson is based on the Lord of the Rings. I haven't had any coffee yet today, so I'll probably feel great as soon as I do, and feel sort of embarrassed that I wrote all this downer shit. If anything I hope someone gets a laugh out of it (and like all those motivational types always say, "If I can just get one person to smile then it was all worth it") :) Smiley.
Bo Hansson - The Black Riders & Flight to the Ford
Bo Hansson - ShadowFax
Bo Hansson - The Horns of Rohan & The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

TP Cruiser

So I received that box set, Love Train (retrospective of the Philly International Label ) the other day in the mail (for fucking $12.99 shipped by the way. I must say these recession prices are off the hinges, although my copy was unsealed and clearly defective, all the CDs work fine, which is alright with me), and although I dig it, I think that either they didn’t go to much length to pull out the stops to find the rarer stuff from the label, or maybe I’m just much more familiar with their stuff than I had previously thought. The tag line on the box set reads “Motown had the polish, and Stax had the grit, but Philly International had both”. Unfortunately both Motown and Stax are just superior labels, Zing! Alright, leaving that suuuuuper opinionated comment behind, Philly International did have some pretty unbelievable jams; most of which have obviously been kicked to death by radio, advertising and marketing. My major critique of many of the songs featured in this box set (and a lot of soul/R&B songs universally have the same problem across the board, especially in the 70s) is that they often extend for an extra 2 or 3 minutes longer than I feel they should (The Jones Girls’ song posted is a perfect example of what I’m talking about). The 3 minute pop song was created for people with ADD (like me), so that they wouldn’t get bored hearing the same hook over and over and over and over and over and over again. While I credit Gamble and Huff (and other associated musicians/writers on the label) to having an amazingly developed and cultured sound, they suffer from overzealously beating the shit out of a dead horse. If anything, you need to leave your audience wanting more, not skipping to the next track at the 3 minute mark. I am open to the possibility that people in the 60s and 70s, having not been raised with the expectation of instant stimulation, customization and gratification (like I was), were more relaxed, accepting, and patient with their music. Plus these songs actually mean something, many have lyrical character that relate to a specific sentiment that I cannot identify with, being middle class, white, a melancholiac and relatively un-experienced with any real oppression. Perhaps I am just the wrong audience for this type of music, even though I’d like to pretend that I can understand and identify with it.

There is another trend that seems to be present on a decent quantity of the songs in this set, which is that redolent speech, usually featured in the beginning of the track (but occasionally in the middle or at the end), that could last anywhere from 15 seconds to a full 2 minutes. This is the message, the whispering of sweet nothings, the sensitive truth, that absolutely needs to be directly narrated (I guess for fear that while any metaphor in the lyrics may potentially be misinterpreted, this passage, which sets the mood, is as sharp as a razor), before being pontificated by the ultimate explosion of crooning, emotionalizing the whole passage. Bobby Womack is probably the most notorious for this, but Marvin Gaye, Leon Haywood, Al Green, Barry White, Jimmy Castor, Jerry Butler, Joe Simon and countless others, are all guilty of evocative narraration (although it’s not a crime). Shit, I’d hire James Earl Jones to narrate the intro to my record. Nevermind, he has the voice, but lacks the feeling. Off topic, but how cool would it have been if James Earl Jones was actually the actor that played Darth Vader when he removed his mask in Return of the Jedi? They should have just left it completely unanswered that he was black and Luke white, and I guess it would go against all those prequels they make where Darth was white, but those should never have been made in the first place. Neeeeerd.

My all-time favorite artist on Philly International is Teddy Pendergrass. TP Represent! If we were in a room together and he sang me “Close the Door”, I literally would, and relinquish my flower to him if he requested it. I would “let him do what he wants to do” as alluded to in the song. He has that power in his voice, and I’m pretty sure that even though he is currently paralyzed from the waist down (and to the utter disbelief of the medical profession in general) he still gets rock hard erections. That picture of him that was on the cover of Wax Poetics (in the hooded fur coat with all the rings in the snow, see above), should be featured somewhere as a visual representation of the term “alpha male”.
Teddy Pendergrass - Close the Door
Teddy Pendergrass - Love TKO
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - Don't Leave Me This Way
The Jones Girls - Your Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else