Return to Endless Summer.

-Last week I was listening to a lot of George Harrison and feeling very spiritual and enlightened and combing over life's greater mysteries and well,......this week I'm not so disappointed to say I'm listening to a lot of Johnny Thunders and The Dictators and I wanna fuck anything that moves. I guess you could call me moody.

-Where I'm staying in So Cal is pretty effin' boring but, I'm a stones throw from a beach that puts most Virginia shorelines to shame, an 18 hole disc golf course, two Mom & Pop guitar stores, the best Italian restaurant I think I've ever eaten at, a Trader Joe's, and a Boot Barn location. All within a two mile radius. Plus the train station is maybe two hundred yards from my front door(y'know the one where I don't pay rent? Yeah I sorta love my fucking job right now.) I can't imagine what else I'd really need, aside from Nic, Matt, Joshua, & Greg. Dammit I miss you fucking fucks.

-My coworkers are really turning out to be the spice of life. Most of them are chaw-dipping rednecks who make me feel as though my brain is turning to mush and leaking outta my ear, but the rest are a colorful array of characters that defy all social pretense. There's the caucasian thug welder from Newport News(who should actually be a standup comic). The 60 yr old Hawaiian who is always smiling and sings Marty Robbins karaoke with me all the time. The former Navy Chief from Flint, MI who was also a radio DJ and loves anything Smiths/Morrissey and all 60's garage(we also regularly karaoke all sorts of shit), the fifty-something redneck who relocated to Hawaii, married a 30 year old bombshell and took up surfing(we basically play pranks on one another constantly), and low and behold if I don't have FIVE new coworkers from Tijuana who smuggle me in tortas and carne asada on the cheap. One of them wants me to come down for a weekend so he can take me to the "good" taco stands that serve beef tongue and beef eyeballs, and the "good" titty bars where the girls *edit* *edit* *edit* *edit*. Pinch me, seriously.

-Besides the coworker shenanigans, I'm taking stock of the small perks that are making my life a little brighter these days. For instance; no bipolar boss micromanaging me into oblivion. They just sorta give me a task and let me run on autopilot for the rest of the day. I fucking love it. Also, our location is nestled upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific, just in between a National Wildlife Refuge and a Marine Corps gun range. It's sort of like Apocalypse Now meets Snow White. There are these bleachers overlooking the beach where I take my breaks each day, and I watch the waves, kelp beds, dolphins, pelicans, vultures, coyotes, rabbits, helicopters, tanks, hovercrafts, and various other amphibious craft do their daily business inside a panorama that extends from San Diego to Dana Point. It is the strangest, most beautiful place I could ever imagine working in. And I regularly nap on the bleacher benches as the hovercrafts I fucking BUILD taxi in and out to sea. Oftentimes they douse me in a blanket of sand but I never mind too much. Most days they can disappear into the horizon by the time I've finished my turkey sandwich, which is fucking FAST. And it has never once ceased to amaze me that my own hands contribute to making these fucking things function. I am still, even in light of my knowledge of them, completely in awe of and cannot quite wrap my head around what makes them go. It's like some weird alien technology that we got from Roswell or something.

-Between years of playing in bands and attending shows and owning about seven guitar amps louder than a jet engine, PLUS the fact that I have been around hovercrafts(which are as loud if not louder than most airplanes) for the past year or so, I am slowly going deaf. I hope my loved ones can deal with this in the years to come. I wear earplugs as often as humanly possible but there's really no turning back now. ..............................WHAT? Exactly.

-Hypothetical: Flirtatious and/or sexy talk via facebook - "Facefucking"? I think it works. And I think I'm running with it.

-I need to start playing more slide guitar or I'm gonna pull my fucking hair out. I'm not gonna tell you how many people have insinuated that I might actually be of African American descent, but it's something I cannot curtail or edit or restrain no matter what I do. Also I might add that old black men are some of my favorite people on earth. I've worked a lot of meanial, manual labor types of jobs in my day and there's always a few old black guys around that just looooooooove to talk. And talk to them I will for hours on end. I get along with them better than anyone. Even the rednecks. I have a theory about rednecks---no one likes rednecks except other rednecks. Whereas everyone wishes they were black. This applies very strongly with music.

-Watching Beth & Trevor surf upon my visit to San Clemente this past weekend reeeeeeeally made me wanna fulfill a lifelong dream to learn to surf. I mean I grew up in a beachtown and did my fare share of bodysurfing & bodyboarding, but growing up in worship of films like The Endless Summer & North Shore, and hanging out in a veritable surf mecca watching my friends walk on fucking water,....it more than peaked my interest. If a Polish punk rock girl from Philly can do this shit, so can I. That said, she is kind of unstoppable at anything she puts her mind to, though. I type this, literally as she's stepping onto a plane to southeast Asia for yet another in her yearly series of puddle jumping surfing adventures. If you're reading this, I still don't think I'm any better of a writer than you, and you're sort of my hero and shit.

-Speaking of I starting writing a lyrical account of all the Polish girls in my life. There's a bunch of them. Like six or seven, all told. Can't tell you why. Not a predetermined sort of thing. I literally just realized one day that I had a large number of women in my life with prominent noses, critical attitudes, fantastic grammar, great record collections, and a curious usage of c's, z's, y,'s, and z's in their last names. More to come on that.

-I love the sun. It just never gets old with me. (This picture was taken from the second balcony that I don't really use. I've worked my ass off this year and yes, I'm going to fucking bask in it.)

*Flussshhh*

Seriously. The weekend of mine and Aneta's birthday jam something just struck me, y'know like one of those "awakenings" or what have you where people describe this sudden moment of clarity and peace of mind. What struck me was that I think that I am categorically through with crazy chicks. By crazy I mean, the looser the morals, the more checkered the past, the more likely I'd be to slip trip and fall into some twitterpated, clitterpated bunny rabbit love. But as I sat in a bar in downtown L.A. listening to a hot rodded, voluptuous Italian broad blather on about her addictions and insanity,...it just hit me that this was in no way shape or form attractive to me anymore. It's really more of a migraine inducing disaster waiting to happen, and above all else; a great liability to my sanity and heart. I just can't afford the chaos anymore, at least not in the hearth of my hearth and inner circle. Although I am certain my manhood could find legitimacy in the more shallow ended pursuits. Even still, I'm not sure my ticker could be trusted in stride with my cock. Everything is so goddamned golden and rosey right now, aside from small bouts of loneliness. But it's really an eyes-on-the-prize kinda fulcrum point in my life. Everything's changing so rapidly(for the better) and the last thing I want is another trainwreck with tits tripping me up again. Now don't go mistaking this for misogyny. This is about culling the herd. I love all women. I love my Mom. I love my aunts, my cousins. I miss my Grandmothers like hell. I love the gang of platonic gals that keep my heart afloat. I love every woman I've even so much as held or woken up next to. I love their shoes and their eyes and their pheromones. I love it when they dish the sweets. I even love the perspective the brighter ones give. But for the batshit ones, I offer cold and derivative apathy. Onward and fucking upward. Find some other motherfucker to fix your goddamned car.

South Patagonia.

I loved this song when it first came out in '93. I was sixteen at the time and just starting to discover and dig into "alternative" rock music. I think prior to the "alt" tag, when I had heard bands of the ilk I really didn't know what to call it, but somehow drawn the parallel to college bands and therefore it was "college rock" to me in years prior. Such as the first time I'd heard Dinosaur Jr or the Smashing Pumpkins' Gish album. It's tough being an only child. You're a categorically late bloomer on many things - social skills, cool points, etc. I didn't skate, I wasn't punk, and I didn't have a cool older brother so pretty much everything I'd caught wind of at the time was of my own accord via things like 120 Minutes or obscure radio shows. But I distinctly remember the feelings I got from hearing some of this music for the first time and it was absolutely spine-tingling. The music video for Frank Black's "Los Angeles", for instance, is terribly ironic(Remember irony? Where the fuck did that take off to?), overtly taking stabs at a plethora of cock rock(disguised as "grunge") bands, and the LA stereotype. I recently cued it up on youtube for a little nostalgia and realized how it foreshadowed many things Kenny to come. I mean really, did Frank Black subconsciously slip me a mickey accompanied by a map and directions to the monolith?

Let's examine:
- Slightly roundish fellow with a penchant for obscure Gibson guitars
- Subversively mocks the guitar riff whilst actually utilizing it
- Sometimes goes by band-based pseudonym
- Spends idle time dawdling on hovercrafts
- Likes to hang out in the desert
- Has dark alter ego who drives an El Camino, has a striking moustache, and also likes to hang out in the desert
- Won't shut up about Los Angeles

Okay so I actually get paid to dawdle on hovercrafts and I don't yet own an El Camino but have always vowed to. And my moustache is real. I rest my case.

Fresh, green hell.

Hello Laurel Canyon. Hello Aneta. Hello smoked meats and booze. I have nothing to complain about, except maybe the lack of a molecular transport beam. Happy Birthday to us!!!

Full Moon Fever.

...strikes again. I had planned on heading out to Joshua Tree for my Halloween weekend. I rented a car, seeing as how my thirty second birthday's coming up in like twelve hours or so. And Spindrift was playing at Pappy & Harriet's and I couldn't think of a better way to ring in the Samhain than in my favorite American locale with one of my favorite American bands. However, once off work Saturday afternoon the idea seemed more tedious than expected, and the warmth of Los Angelino friends beckoned. Ie; Shannon & the gang were all headed to Bar 107 downtown, making it a prime opportunity to catch up with everyone I'd missed so dearly in the last year. And I'm more than a little tired of the solo-adventures(although I belie this statement in the fact that usually it's Al's who there to crack me up). It dawned on me recently that out of all the things I've experienced, so few I'd be able to recall without someone there to remind me, because they weren't there with me to share in the melee. So I packed up, made an impromptu costume purchase at my local Boot Barn location, and headed out into the sunset with an iPod full of metal, brooding 60's garage, and Bruce Springsteen. I'd planned on donning myself as Burt Reynolds in Smokey & The Bandit 2, but given more thought I figured I'd just come off looking like a normal cowboy-type. So then I thought, why not just another Dia De Los Muertos cowboy? I stuck with this plan until applying makeup to my balmy face in Al's Los Feliz abode. Not even a 1/4 of the way into a full skull face as the sweat and grease paint were not mixing, so I decided to hang it up and just go as.........well as a regular ole fucking cowboy. How inventive and original, right? It wasn't until later, after Al donned his last minute "biker" getup did we realize we looked like the biggest pair of flaming gays east of Fairfax. I mean literally, we stood around his pad making fun of ourselves for a solid half hour before we actually left. "Gay Meth dealers from Phoenix", "The Village People", and a few others that escape me. We finally garnered the heuvos to head out to meet Shannon, Mike, and the gang at Bar 107, and here's what it looked like....

...this one pretty much trumped everything. Cannonball Run, incase you needed a hint.
(comic genius) Lizzy Cooperman as Peg Bundy.
Shannon Hatch as Lady Gaga and Mike Burns as Ric FUCKING Flair.
Gay Meth Dealer & the Nature Boy.
Dani Stew is still in my spank bank, and Shannon.
Dudes.


Third Gratuitous shot with the ladies. It's becoming a theme.
I don't understand what was so funny about this. I am an embarrassment to dudes everywhere.
No comment.
Dancing on the ceiling.

"Ssssssso you guyssssss wanna buy sssssome crank?
Reading Shannon's aura.

The morning after, Al and I planned on revising our old Sunday tradition, the hangover Sunday Venice Beach crawl. We ate Sashimi Tuna sammies at Rose Cafe where we usually skeez on the parking by sneaking out the front door. But since we'd arrived early the lot attendant would've been wise to us. Somehow we decided it might be cooler to just drive up the Pacific Coast Highway beyond Malibu, just for the Sunday fuck of it. We headed due north under a characteristically postcard skyline listening to Rubber Soul, and had one of the best little jaunts in recent memory. Every corner and hillside/ocean lagoon decent yielded the sickest views and all were dictated by Lennon & McCarntney's cue. It was absolutely sublime. Al suggested we keep hiking just north of the county line to a biker bar in Ventura called Neptune's Net for some suds and eye candy. We drank twenty ounces against a toasty sunset and watched the waves and the bourgeois bikers and even witnessed a bizarre surfer brawl. All in all, we hopped back in the car with some Gram Parsons and The Faces, basked in Mullholland and Topanga and all points in between, to finish off with a visit with Aneta in Laurel Canyon, taco stand vittles and more laughter than I can spare. It's a love/hate thing with this town. This weekend it was most definitely love.

R.I.P. Chuck.

To all the girls I've loved before.

No, I didn't mix up the title with the video. I found it coinCIdentally fitting. I've returned to California of my own reconnaissance. Not to revisit outdated modes of thinking or doing. I've spent these past months plundering great trenches of my head and heart, searching for patterns, answers, evidence. I might've come to a conclusion or two but that, in and of itself is merely the precipice of the next step; transformation. Rooting out and attempting to correct what's only brought me anguish and perpetual backsliding. Then again, I wanna say "Fuck it." Ride it out. Keep the company of rogues, sociopaths, soothsayers, and crazed, treacherous women. Live the inevitable peaks and valleys of this rollercoaster and hey, maybe one day pen some memiors or something, right? Incidentally, have you seen or read Willie Nelson's biography? It's as thick as War and Peace. I have a firm belief in a soul's karmic journey and well, sometimes your glitches are the wheels to get you there. The learning never stops. In the meantime, I am more than likely headed to a train station or desert shanty near you(No, not you). I was in L.A. a weekend or two ago, and I gotta say--not sure what I ever saw in that place. It's pretty filthy, actually. Luckily, I love a select few of it's inhabitants like the motherfucking dickens. X fucking O.