Dairy of a Madman

Two commercials, back to back, making me wonder if some ad agency is stealing my humor:

Hardee’s, featuring a grown man suckling at the teat, proclaiming that it’s time to stop eating like a baby and start eating their Frisco Burger. Or something. I lost track after the grown head popped up from the woman’s chest.

And Playtex, where a woman uses a tampon to plug a hole in the rowboat. Now, I’m grown and twice-married, so I know what a tampon looks like, and how it works, and so forth, in FAR more detail than I should. But I don’t need to see it in action.

It could have been worse, I suppose. The boat could have been caught in a red tide…

Ad agencies of the world: HIRE ME. I’m the wave of the future, and I’m breaking on your shore.

ONE:

My brother and I are apparently living life in parallel.

Or, to quote him, in a non-Barry White voice: “Love is in the air.”

And I hope this embarasses him, at least a little.

TWO:

I just saw a bunch of elderly exercising, apparently a commercial for some step-class for older folks. And I know this is cruel, and karma will make sure I live to be 108 for thinking it (much less saying it in a public forum), but damn, that was ghoulish.

And funny. Ghoulish and funny go together well.

My brain hurts, and I’m going to hell.

Not in the traditional sense of found art — more like, “Look what I found when I was digging through some old data back-up CDs!” Ladies and germs, I present to you the score to GOODNIGHT, MOON (my first short film), as recorded and composed by myself and Daniel Farris (Lunasect):

A WEB OF YARN
IMAGINATION
BEAUTY, PEACE
DREAM
THE RIGHT THING
GOODNIGHT, MOON

Released for the very first time. One day, you can say you downloaded me when…

Spent the morning doing a “remix” (Acid loops on top of a pre-existing bass and guitar rough mix doesn’t really count as a remix, really) of Innocent, the bluegrass bit from the new Exhibit(s) disc. It’s necessary for the Red Bull promo video I’m putting together, but damn it, I feel like I’ve accomplished little to nothing today.

So I’m here, writing babble.

Hopefully, by day’s end, I’ll have finished the video, and maybe gotten a little ways into my Big Pile of Writing that has backlogged itself into a nightmare.

This week has been a wash for freelance work. Though I did get to drive a Porsche really fast…. That counts for something, right?

* Does Uli Jon Roth ever look back and think, “What the fuck was I thinking?”

* Does David Lee Roth ever look forward and think?

* Seriously. Have you ever heard ASTRAL SKIES when not doped to the gills and not sat in a blind stupor, thinking to yourself, “Why did I buy this?”

* Musicians that enjoy the studio experience more than playing live are masochists.

* How long can one sober person listen to ASTRAL SKIES? Three songs and counting…

* It is possible to get sunburned in March in Alabama. Not easy, but possible.

* Oh, my god. Who let this man sing? The guitar playing is good, and the only reason anyone ever talks about the man’s career — but for the love of all that is holy and good, who allowed him to sing?!

* Is it insane of me to want to redesign a website with a randomly chosen CSS file that totally changes the look of the site on each visit? (Answer: yes. Because who has that kind of time?)

* The answer, even early in the morning when stamina is strong and the will is weak: 4 songs. And I feel damaged. And it’s still your fault.

Her name was Elisa. As hard as I try, that’s all I can remember; I know that there’s more, and that somewhere stuck in my head, I have more. But the only thing that I can dredge from the murky depths is Elisa.

She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t picture her at all anymore. The best I get today is a smoky blur before the breeze picks up and blows her image away from me, wisps of incense in a hurricane. But I remember the beauty, the way my stomach clenched every time I saw her face, an angel given form.

Somewhere along the path, I fell in love with her, and I think she with me. I can’t be sure. There are words, but they might as well be in Aramaic, Korean, hieroglyphs dancing just out of reach. I laughed a lot with her, and talked into the shadowy hours when we should both have been sound asleep and dreaming, but we were dreaming with our eyes open, and that was good. Responsible adults were other people.

Sometimes, when I’m walking on the lawn, the wind shifts and the rain approaches from the east, and something on the air reminds me of her. I can’t place it, can’t cage that scent, but I know it’s there and suddenly, for all too brief an instant, the world spins its cyclone dance around me and I’m back in her arms, she trying so hard to get me to dance with her, gossamer threads of hair brushing my cheek, lips pressed against my cheek, and I can hear her voice again, whispering promises of tomorrow to me sweetly. And the moment passes, like all moments do, but I can carry that smile for days.

Memory fails, but dreams remain.

How many of you can say that your ex-wife is getting your help in planning for her wedding?

I know — it’s a dubious honor. I mean, how many of you have two divorces under your belt?

But I like to call it staying in practice.

Ah, the wonderful world of freelance, where your fortune can change from Ramen Noodles to top cut Filet in a matter of minutes. One moment, I’m convinced my power will be shut off by the end of the month; the next, I’m invoicing out $400 for a few editing jobs, planning a $600 video shoot for the weekend, and finalizing the details to get paid an obscene amount of money to learn to race a Porsche.

Yeah, it’s tough being me. Or, as I put it in my less manic moments, it’s great work when you can get it.

For those playing at home, if this was steady and stable, I’d be a lot more at ease with my situation. But when weeks can go buy with no money incoming, and those same weeks are filled with autos and computers and other equipment hemmorhaging cash, it can feel a little hairy.

So today was spent reviewing a metric shitload of CDs for Birmingham Weekly in weeks to come — Doves, Yngwie Malmsteen, James LaBrie, Queens of the Stone Age, Stuart McNair, Black Label Society. Overload. Overload. Danger, Will Robinson!

Yesterday was spent writing up the interview I did with Shadows Fall singer Brian Fair — which reminds me that this will be the most fortunate concert-going month in my history. I’ve got Steve Vai in 2 days, Shadows Fall (with my brother’s band Catchfire opening) on the 24th, and then Strapping Young Lad in Atlanta on 4/29. And I’ve got VIP passes to all…

Yeah, it’s tough being me.

The job I was shooting for at UAB reopened, and after a few phone calls, I think I’ve sorted out how to avoid my paperwork falling between beaurocratic cracks this time. It’s a good thing, too — the potential boss is a good guy, from what I saw working parallel to him; the job is right up my alley (part web design, part programming, and part writing); and the salary is… well, it’s nice to think that I haven’t worked as hard as I have all these years to continually look at making roughly under my age in thousands. Here’s hoping….

And of course, the continual distraction that is known as Pookie. She may well be the ruin of my logical thinking.

That’s a good thing, by the way.

And yes, she has a real name, but it’s been changed to protect the innocent. Legally changed, at that.

I should probably stop smoking. I don’t know why — which is why I probably won’t stop smoking — but I should.

Possibly going down to Clanton to record eight bass tracks on Sunday for the new Exhibit(s) disc. I’m thrilled beyond description that the process for the next disc has finally been set in motion. I told Chance that I suspected that getting the ball rolling was the only thing standing in the way of finally getting another AEX disc out; turns out inertia is on my side and I might have been right. It’s a strong collection of tracks (no surprise, given Eric’s abilities), with only one tune that I’m not a fan of (it’s just never clicked with me). Hopefully, the end result will be worthy, and maybe even a little different from the live versions we’ve been playing weekly for over a year now.

And dammit, I need to get this year’s two submissions for the Sidewalk festival over to their office, just to get it out of the way.