The Moogyblog

Three things: 1) I'm burned out on political crap that just depresses me and that I can't do anything about, so no more of that. 2) I have decided that I'm going to go freelance. No turning back now. 3) I'm also definitely moving away from Ohio in about a year. To New Jersey, with my gf. Good riddance, fuckeyes.

Forgive me, I've had a particularly bad day. Job shit. On the plus side, I made us an awesome pot of my famous Red White & Bleu Fettucine for dinner.

With that, I'm officially putting The Moogyblog on indefinite hold. Too much negativity and black bile in here, so I'm starting over--beginning the next day in the life, so to speak. Although it's been lying dormant for almost a year, I direct you to my new-old-stock blog, Reflections In A Flubber Room, for my day to day ramblings (and I do intend to write more often from now on). Hopefully it will be a happy place, no pun intended. I'll post the URL shortly.

Actually, it's more like a crush, one of those ones that makes your insides all knotty.

So when am I gonna kick the shy guy routine and do something about it?

I think it will come back. Main things I need now are:

1) Some space.
2) A microphone.
3) Free time.
4) Some sleep.

I can't wait to put that M-Audio Delta 66/Omno IO through the paces.

Oh boy, fall--gray, colorless fall--is upon us.

I'm feeling rather nostalgic. Remember the good old days when I had lots of discretionary cash, and I blew it all on overpriced VHS-format anime? Ah...I'll probably go into the whole thing another time, but for now I feel an awesomely strong urge to get back into the hobby. Somehow. I'm burnt out on music, for the most part (I don't recommend being in two bands simultaneously); my efforts to try my hand at filmmaking don't seem to be going anywhere. TV, with (surprisingly!) several exceptions, is boring as always. I'm always tired. I long for a hobby that has the potential for creative expression but doesn't require it--that I can just sit back and enjoy passively, preferably with a bunch of other like-minded compadres. Ah...I miss the camaraderie of otaku culture. Of course, these days I wonder how well I'd mesh with a bunch of 15-year-olds who consider Nuku Nuku (one of my favorites) to be "old-skool", if they've heard of it at all. I remember the VHS fansub scene, after all. I remember Laserdiscs, for chrissakes! I remember when Otakon fit comfortably into the conference space of a hotel--I was there. Can one go back home? Can one be 25 again, can one be blissfully unaware of the impending dotcom crash and 9/11 and Iraq, and can one pop in an episode of Tenchi Muyo! without feeling vaguely foolish?

Perhaps I ought to renew my prescription for Wellbutrin soon. I've been out since before my trip to Jersey. Maybe that's why I'm feeling so washed out and useless and uncreative. Funny, though, my trip was a lot of fun.

Someone convince me not to give music up entirely after tonight.

Maybe I should quit whining and get some sleep like I said I would a half hour ago.

This is how we go out...not with a band, nor a whimper or whisper either. We go out in a hail of guitars randomly going silent in the middle of songs, false starts, and temporary mindblackouts from having songs that I know like my own dick get the rug pulled out from under them. Total chaos. And a total fucking DISASTER. That's how Twiggy & Frollywog played its last show. I can't even pull off the last song--one of my own, "Triplets"--without shit going to shit. Forget going out with glory and a hearty "Thank You Columbus!!". My thanks were reserved for Tori, our erstwhile new singer, for saving my ass by lending me her Peavey str@t so I could finish the fucking song. Exact quote. "Thanks, Tori, for saving my ass." That ranks up there with "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" as a rock 'n roll epitaph. I offered to give my Les Paul to the next band, Sk8Naked or something--a bunch of high school thrash punks--to use as a stage prop to smash up or something. Or maybe I should have pulled a Townshendrix and destroyed it myself...something drastic and audacious and showmanlike to save my face. It would have felt really damn good to turn that malfucktioning Les Paul into toothpicks right then and there, even if I would've gotten thrown out and possibly sued for property damage. But no, I'm a wimp. And even my wimpy attempt at a BANG failed. I turned around to shake my amp--make the reverb springs go CRASH!!! you know--for a finale, and there wasn't even any fucking power getting to the amp. Looks like that power strip was too close to Jason's foot and he must have kept kicking the switch. GOD DAMN IT I'm not in a good mood, I think I'm gonna go sleep and forget this gig.

Only I can't... I was conscientious enough to bring both my digital camera and my camcorder. SO we have both photos AND video! WHoo hoo!

Sk8Naked had a bunch of their adoring fawning teenage pals there cheering them on. Ah, youth! They had lots of energy and teenage attitude oozing like acne juice (I, on the other hand: 32 years old, tired, surly, feeling quite irrelevant). Didn't think they were particularly good, but they sure have that MTV headbang stage shtick down pat. I'm sure they'll go far in the music biz.

Poop House Reilly, our opener, were great and entertaining, as always. We've played there at Andyman's with them before. Their set closer provides the sums-it-all-up quote that we couldn't provide ourselves: Shit motherfucker, goddamn.

I'm uninspired
When I'm tired

I'd write at work, while coffee-wired
But I'm afraid I might get fired

That's probably the most interesting thing I've written all day. The future bodes well for me if I can maintain that level of brilliance.

I recently got my hands on Nation Of Rebels: How Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by a couple of philosophy profs from Canada whose names I forget. Excellent read. They pretty much confirm everything I said in my previous post about those trendy downtown lofts and the hosewankers who they're marketed to. I was not just imagining things. Ha! Elitist upper-middle-class fuckos.

And I might throw in that my recovery from Apple zealotry is all but complete. Macs don't suck, really, I guess. I just can't afford them. And I've gotten to really hate their hipster-yupster arrogance.

I really must get off this class warfare crap. It gets so old hearing little old me carping away at all the successful people in America all the time. Anyway, read.

Okay, here's the deal. I'm going to start writing in this damn thing regularly, dammit, because I need to friggin' write. My brain is atrophying. I feel the red fronds of my creative weed withering in the dry, harsh heat of a decade that I suspect we will all have pointedly forgotten about in twenty years time. Besides, the gauntlet has been laid down by my latest bandmate with her incessant blogging. More on her later. Anyway I think I need to get back in the habit of journaling or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be literature, I must remind myself, even though that is my natural reflex when writing. It does, however, have to be real.

So much has happened in the last year or so since I wrote, so I won't go into it all. First, though, 2005-2006 represents my first official post-lonely year. Cherie and I are now so tight that neither of us can really remember ever being apart or in fact not knowing each other. We've both done a lot of fun things, had some arguments as all couples do, and learned a lot about life from each other. I know that I'm a much more complete person than I ever could have been if I'd not met her--I mean her specifically, with her tough, honest, cut-the-bullshit New Jersey aura, her knowledge of the real world outside of the bland grey cocoon that is Columbus, her spirituality (something I never really considered exploring for myself before she came along and challenged my long-held ideas), and her absolute devotion to and belief in the people that she loves. I think I've learned now what a narcissistic, cynical, negative turd I've been for much of my life, and I think Cherie's taught me how to really care about and love not just her but other people in general. I still have a lot of issues I need to deal with, but I'm getting there.

Speaking of which, I've been thinking about new directions I might like to take in my life (all of which include Cherie, of course :-) ).

1) Possibly go back to school. I'll go more into detail in my next post, or something, but basically there's a strong, personal emotional/psychological motivation in addition to the usual career and insatiable lust for knowledge motivations.

2) Try to start earning my bread by doing freelance design. Freedom is the holy grail I'm looking for here. But the 8-to-5 routine combined with a really shitty salary and chronic de facto poverty are really getting old. Again, more later.

3) Creative endeavors: Now that Twiggy & Frollywog are one day away from ending it's tenure as a gigging band and Floorian is soldiering along at its usual glacial pace, I'm wondering whether I want to start a new band of my own, work on my own shit, take a break from music outside of Floorian, get involved with the local filmmaking scene instead, etc.

and the biggie:

4) I really, really, really want to move to New York City.

(There is, of course, an obvious fifth one as well, but I'll let you guess what that is...I'm biding my time, hehe.)

Tiredness is dragging me down. I think I will try to write again Friday, since I play my last Twiggy gig tomorrow night.

Is it summer again already? Godliness. A lot has been happening lately. Most recently, happiness has flooded my life, distracting me from the continued absurdity of the big stage, in the form of my sweetheart having moved in with me. I don't think I could have expected how nice it would be. It is nice. I'm actually looking forward to domestic life; it sure beats the nonlife I had as a lonely bachelor. I'm a lousy housekeeper. Already we're talking about how to make my pad more interesting/comfy/etc.

There's also been lots of changes within my two bands. Read "changes" as "defections." I won't go into it here.

I have one thing to be bitchy/moany about. Last night we went to Lowe's to look at paint samples, lights, etc. I insisted on buying two of those house-plan books-cum-catalogs. They're sometimes fun to look through, see--for $8 you get 500 artists' renderings and floorplans for 500 stylish, quaint, flexible, enchanting, and 500-other-adjective Dream Homes, between 800 and 5000 square feet, that YOU can build! It's fun to imagine yourself and your significant other living in one. It's oddly thrilling to fantasize about the kickass home recording studio I could build in that "Bonus" room.

Then reality sets in. These things are basically what they call McMansions.

I get a sick feeling in my gut when I really get down to thinking about them. For lots of reasons. Something about them is really tantalizing, the same way that a gallon of Nestle Quik gulped down quickly is tantalizing.

I guess as living spaces they are pretty nice. They certainly are plenty more spacious than most of the older houses I'm familiar with, and way way larger than the house we now share. Lots of extra rooms. Some even have an atrium, solarium, rotunda, etc.

These'd be great if:

1) They were real. As in, real Victorian, real Tudor, real Cape Cod, etc.
2) They weren't designed to be magnificently, splendiforously, luxuriously shoddy.
3) They weren't, paradoxically, priced as if they really were mansions.
4) They were designed to be part of an actual neighborhood and/or community rather than a subdivision out in the boonies, where the silence has an unnerving Twilight Zone quality.
5) Living in one didn't pretty much define me as precisely the kind of person I loathe.

Jealousy probably has a lot to do with it. Class consciousness certainly does. So does my sometimes irritating need to "maintain my integrity," to not sell out (not that I could anyway); my disdain for pretentiousness and conspicuous consumption; my sympathy for aesthetic and historical fidelity in architecture; and my love of traditional-type neighborhoods, even if they don't love me and my propensity for practicing the guitar loud back.

We both think that Victorian houses are quite cool. You know, the ones with the turrets and the extensive porches? Assuming we ever get to where we can afford a house at all, I'd almost rather look for a real Victorian house. But that sucks because both of us would like to someday have an in-ground pool, and around here Victorian houses seem to have really tiny back yards, choked with dark green leafy vines.

Some of these catalog houses have turrets. Many could certainly have a pool out back. And many are even identified as "Victorian" in the book. They actually don't look very Victorian to me--they look like big modern suburban houses. But my, are the pictures pretty to look at!

Question is: is this the kind of house we really want to end up in? Is this the kind of neighborhood (er, neighborless hood, in this case)...or the kind of lifestyle that it represents?

Oh, and don't get me started on this so-called Urban Revival or whatever they call it style. I mean, if I want to live in the "Main Street USA" set on a movie studio backlot--oops, I forgot that the studios don't have backlots anymore, and they film everything in Canada and Australia anyway. How about other trendily rebellious housing styles for the upwardly mobile yet cutting-edge young professional? Try www.notsobighouse.com. Ugh. The only kinds of housing that make me gag harder are those luxury lofts they're marketing downtown, but I've bitched about those already.

My cynical take is to not worry because the chances of us ever getting to that level are probably almost nil anyway. This is a moral dilemma for yuppies. Neither of us are yuppies. Personally I hope we never have the misfortune of becoming some, or even succumbing to the kinds of dreck that they value.

First things first anyway: we have to get our modest--er, "quaint," in the 1-800-DREAM-HOME catalog--little abode repainted, decorated, arranged, etc. to our liking. Which is infinitely more fun.

One more thing: if I hear someone talk about entertaining guests in their "Great Room" one more time I'm gonna throttle 'em. It's an effin' living room, dammit!

My, my, am I in a weird mood today.

aftynoon!

In an effort to steer myself away from the self-flagellating monomania of politics and class warfare, and to add something different to my usual uninteresting rants about my life, I've decided to share with you some of my favorite websites, the ones I keep going back to because they are so incredibly fascinating, educational, or just cool to look at/listen to.

Here's the first one:

http://www.forgotten-ny.com

I've only ever been to New York City a few times, but regardless of everything I've heard about the place being a giant cellblock/insane asylum/pressure cooker/black hole for one's income, I'm utterly fascinated by it, in large part because it's so full of character. When I think of NYC, I think of a huge, diverse, gloriously grimy place that has never really molted much of its ancient skin, an anachronistic accretion of secret doorways to hidden side streets, rusted disused fire alarms, and flaking painted billboards for drugstores that haven't existed since Roosevelt was president. Seems like a wonderful place to spend a year or two wandering around and exploring.

Forgotten NY makes it easy. You don't even have to pick up from your easy chair. It helps that the guy who runs it lives there; his drive and enthusiasm for cataloguing and photographing all the curiosities hiding in plain sight within the five boroughs is just incredible. His sections on ancient street lamps and road signs are my personal favorites, along with Street Scenes and places you'd never believe you'd see in New York City. Like a country lane, for example, or a fishing village, or a sheer mountain cliff, or an untouched primeval forest that wasn't designed by architects. This urban exploration stuff is tre cool, and although Columbus has its share of neato old stuff still in place, we've done quite well in erasing most of our public antiques from the streets. For this stuff, as with many other things, New York is where it's at. Eat it up.

Next: either obsolete phone noises, dicreet shortwave radio noises, or abandoned airports.

But before that, news. Like Twiggy & Frollywog's new practice space!