no more mr nice guy

i didnt really think of a costume this year. I was on my way out the door to a friends house for a party i was invited to jam at, and i thought hmm maybe i'll run back in and put some zombie makeup on. I started looking through my makeup and found this cool black eyeliner i have, and then decided to do Alice Cooper makeup. Did that. Dug up some shiny rockstar pants, big black boots. Then i needed a shirt, and we happen to have a Phoenix FD shirt (brother is a fireman in PHX), so i wore that because that's where scary Alice lives now.

Then i went to the party. Everyone thought i was a zombie anyway. Only one person recognized me as Alice Cooper. Huh.

like the white stripes, but a million times better

This has happened before... i went on a Toadies tear, and a Deftones one, a Cream one, a Big Sugar one, a Therapy? one.

I'm now on a Black Keys frenzy.

My favorite store, still around. Plus a little punk rock history

I used to LOVE going to Restyle. I rarely could afford anything there, but when it was time for new boots, it was off to Restyle. I let nothing come between the boots and i. I just loved going in there and checking out the clothes. Everytime i go back home to visit, i stop in a couple of places... Aardvark's Odd Ark (Last time i was there it seemed more like a charity store for AA than the really great vintage clothing store it once was), Greeko's (been there since the 60s. Great head shop. It's also taken a weird turn), and good ol' Restyle.

Maybe i'm old, but i kind of roll my eyes at 2nd millenium punk kids. Mohawks barely turn heads, especially when they're on 8-year-olds. There doesn't really seem to be anything rebellious about it. The newer music kind of sucks. It's all been done already, so how boring.

sugar coated

the mountains got a light dusting of snow last night. Probably right at about 5500 feet. It looked really pretty this morning.

number six

Sunday was our sixth anniversary :). That's a long time. To me. We've been together for eleven years i think. Since 1995? Before i came to Oregon.

have some dirt, boys

We got the PA, the 4-track, the effects all hooked up. By ourselves.

Yesterday we sat down and made some noise, just to make some noise. And we got a nice hooky thing out of it that can easily be rendered into a song. We were missing some things, like a drum key (we dealt), a tuner (we got the guitars as close as we could), a strap (sat on the floor). I joked if it was this cool when we were half-assed, imagine how it'll be once we have our shit together. I'm going to fiddle around with the 4-track, maybe see if i can find a user manual for it online, this week, scrape the memory of how to use it off the inside of my head and throw a tape in.

the little light stays on

One of the people i enjoy jamming with here and i had decided a few months ago we wanted to put something together. Last week, we finally got a drummer, a guitar player, a bass player and a vocalist all in the same place.

And the next day, i saw Natalie and kind of sighed about it all. That group just doesn't mesh for some reason. It might, later down the line, but combine it with a psycho little kid at the practice place and it probably isn't gonna happen soon.

So my little brain started working really hard. And slowly, it dawned on me. We have the drums. The bass. The PA. The guitar. We can fumble along pretty well on all those instruments. The thing that really matters is that we also have two 4-tracks, Audacity and we know how to use them, as well.

Screw it. We two of us are a band. We don't need anyone else. If someone asks us to play somewhere, we'll have to wing it and bring someone in for the gig, but we're just going to record stuff.

yabba dabba doo

We got this rental car, a 2005 Chevy Cobalt. The new thing is in the body shop thus the rental car.

It's zippy and all, but drives like it has square wheels. Or big granite ones.

all these things that went on

i was out on the coast this weekend again. Stayed in the cabin at LaVerne Park (near Coquille) and then a yurt (yurt-de-durt) in Sunset Bay State Park. I had four people with me. Three of them were teenagers. One of those teenagers says i listen to the shittiest music. Well, i made her listen to Butt Trumpet and the Supersuckers and Reverend Horton Heat. They all like Skynrd. So who REALLY likes the shittiest music? yeah, ain't me. Thought so. pfft.

Outward, a tire blew up and we got lectured by a dirt-phobic state cop. Who, i should add, was nearly completely useless. All was relatively fine after that.

A lot of my friends came by to hang out, and the kids busied themselves out collecting crap like crawdads at LaVerne, which they ate for dinner.

I don't know if i had fun or not. I did a ton of driving. It was nice being out there, but i was on someone else's time schedule and that always makes me a little edgy.

I was surrounded by raccoons at Sunset. Everyone had gone to sleep and i was out at the campfire, and two raccoons came nosing around. Everything was put away and thrown out, but there they were. Then another one came around. There were just the three for awhile, and then two more snuck in and i just watched them. They're so weird to watch. Then i heard some rustling and saw like four more come cruising into the site. So now there were 8 of them, all looking at me like i was something that shouldn't be there, and together they were going to remove me. I gave up, said goodnight, and then crashed out.

Yeah so next time, it'll probably be just me and maybe one or two other people in a yurt-de-durt or a cabin again. those are nice. They sleep five, but it's like being in the damn drunk tank with five. The New Boots ran pretty good, although it was pretty weighed down with five people's crap and the five people. I really struggled steering it on some of those turns. It just wallowed.

And then yesterday we saw a sea lion on the beach at Bastendorff. Weird place to find one just hanging out and staring at the sky, but there it was.

Pictures will come along shortly, probably. My camera is screwed up, it's just getting old and needs new batteries so the camera sat charging itself like 70% of the time i was there.