Putting a band together is like dating. There's the awkward set-up, the stuttering emails as you clumsily attempt to arrange schedules. And sometimes, when you meet, there are creepy vibes. Really creepy vibes that make you want to never see that person again. Then there are the ones who you like and they like you but there's just not a real connection, you know, musically, which is close to the groin region.
I was exchanging emails with a cigar-box banjo player who also has synaesthesia. He seemed really excited but then got too scared. It saddened me as I really want to know what colors my songs are but alas, it was not to be. I exchanged emails with a few bass players and a guitarist but it just didn't work out. They want to co-write and I want a benevolent band dictatorship. There was a drummer I had a few sessions with but things just didn't fit and by that I mean to say that he dumped me. That's what my big announcement was going to be. Sigh. The drummer, not the getting dumped. It's hard to be out there again. It takes a long time to get things done and in the meantime, you're all vulnerable with your imploring advertisements and singing songs to strangers in one-on-one situations. Sometimes I get frustrated and want to ditch the whole thing. I'm too old. I'm too lame. It's too hard. I'm too scared. But I have these ideas and so on I go.
From the beginning, I've wanted to add a percussionist, not necessarily a drummer. So I've recruited a friend of mine to play percussion. She doesn't necessarily know how to play but as far as I can tell, she has a good sense of rhythm and a willingness to learn. So far, I have provided her with a snare drum and a tambourine. I got my ass out to the Richmond this morning to pick up some el cheapo stands. They're ridiculously rust-covered. There will be some scrubbing. She'll probably end up with a Frankenstein drum kit which pleases me. We'll see. We'll see what happens here. I want to have good feelings about it but I know all about not counting your chicks before they hatch. Anyway, I should talk more about this band forming process. I'll let you know what's up.
3/23/2009
3/22/2009
Blatant, uncomfortable hints.
Thoughts. I have them. And I have nothing else to blog about but these little snippets. Consider:
1) The new Neko Case album, Middle Cyclone is so good that I am both impressed and bitterly jealous. Were it so that writing about random happenings outside my immediate frame of reference was what I do... but no. I keep it personal. I've lived a life, people. But her lyrics make the songs what they are and what they are is brilliant. I don't mean to talk shit but I didn't really get Fox Confessor. Or else, I got it and it was just a little too dark. Middle Cyclone is more relationship based and I'm pretty sure one song is about secret, gay love (Vengeance Is Sleeping... anyone care to discuss that with me? Totally, right?) so you know I'm into that.
2) School is going really well, both the furniture making class and the web development (HTML and XHTML) class. The ironing board I'm constructing has legs. Right now would be a good time for me to buy more materials but quite frankly, it's not gonna happen. School may be why I never have enough time to write but it's good to get learned.
3) There is so much going on with The Heated but you will not hear about it here first. My mailing list will hear about it first. That is a blatant, uncomfortable hint. Deal with it. I have been playing a ton lately and there are new songs that of course, are utterly brilliant and display my inner-beauty in a way that makes me glow from within, literally. No, not literally.
1) The new Neko Case album, Middle Cyclone is so good that I am both impressed and bitterly jealous. Were it so that writing about random happenings outside my immediate frame of reference was what I do... but no. I keep it personal. I've lived a life, people. But her lyrics make the songs what they are and what they are is brilliant. I don't mean to talk shit but I didn't really get Fox Confessor. Or else, I got it and it was just a little too dark. Middle Cyclone is more relationship based and I'm pretty sure one song is about secret, gay love (Vengeance Is Sleeping... anyone care to discuss that with me? Totally, right?) so you know I'm into that.
2) School is going really well, both the furniture making class and the web development (HTML and XHTML) class. The ironing board I'm constructing has legs. Right now would be a good time for me to buy more materials but quite frankly, it's not gonna happen. School may be why I never have enough time to write but it's good to get learned.
3) There is so much going on with The Heated but you will not hear about it here first. My mailing list will hear about it first. That is a blatant, uncomfortable hint. Deal with it. I have been playing a ton lately and there are new songs that of course, are utterly brilliant and display my inner-beauty in a way that makes me glow from within, literally. No, not literally.
3/16/2009
Fey handmade is my new friend
Hi friends. Yes, things are still crazy busy in my world but I got off work a little bit early today to go to the dentist and happen to have a free half hour to do some posting before I scurry off to furniture making class. Let's do this.
Fey Ways: I've been trying to develop my wholesale for the tea towels a bit more as my own online retail has cooled. Leave it to the experts, that's my opinion. Please say hello to the latest distributor in The Heated's enterprises, Fey Handmade. They're not just carrying tea towels either. They've got The Heated's EP on there too. I'm sure it will fly off the shelves... ok, well I hope they sell some towels anyway. Their site is really lovely. Of course, now this means I need to update my own website with them and Two If By Sea listed as stores. More work! I love work!
Pick It: I've recently had this breakthrough in my guitar playing that involves me using the thinnest guitar pick I can find. It's opened up this new dynamic range that I've found limiting in electric guitar. But I was limiting myself with those thick, manly picks. From now on, it's all wispy, lady-like picks for me.
Scrape It: The dental hygienist I had last time I attended the dentist six months ago almost made me not go back today. Luckily, that bitch was gone and there was a much better hygienist with the greenest eyes I've ever seen. It's like that light blue face mask set those green eyes ablaze. Anyway, the last hygienist I had was not really a bitch but as she was cleaning my teeth, she kept wiping the instruments on the bib I was wearing, instead of a separate piece of gauze, which seemed intuitively wrong. As she wiped, she told me the story of plaque, which basically goes like this, "bugs shit in your mouth."
Then at one point, when my mouth was full of water and my own scraped-off mouth-filth, she asked me if I wanted her to suction it out but in order to answer, I had to swallow and she was all, "Geez, most people don't want to swallow that," and I was thinking that neither did I and that she should have just suctioned, not asked.
Then, before she started scraping, she held up a pair of darkened safety glasses and said, "you're going to want to put these on."
"Why?" I asked and as she struggled with a nicer way to say it, I asked, "splashback?"
"Yes," she said. I found it really strange and I had never, never, ever had anyone offer safety glasses to shield me from my own spit. I put them on but I really didn't want to. Once they were on my face, I could see they were totally spotted with dried liquid. Other people's splashback. Gross. After I removed them, I noticed that she just rinsed them off under the sink, very briefly. Ew. Ew. Ew.
Then at the end, she asked me if I wanted to wipe my face with my bib. Did she mean the bib that she had wiped all my mouth funk? Is that what she meant? Yes, it was. I did not do it. I did not give in to pressure and wipe my own face with my own mouth. She thought I was really weird. In short, it was one of the least hygienic experiences I've had in a while.
Fey Ways: I've been trying to develop my wholesale for the tea towels a bit more as my own online retail has cooled. Leave it to the experts, that's my opinion. Please say hello to the latest distributor in The Heated's enterprises, Fey Handmade. They're not just carrying tea towels either. They've got The Heated's EP on there too. I'm sure it will fly off the shelves... ok, well I hope they sell some towels anyway. Their site is really lovely. Of course, now this means I need to update my own website with them and Two If By Sea listed as stores. More work! I love work!
Pick It: I've recently had this breakthrough in my guitar playing that involves me using the thinnest guitar pick I can find. It's opened up this new dynamic range that I've found limiting in electric guitar. But I was limiting myself with those thick, manly picks. From now on, it's all wispy, lady-like picks for me.
Scrape It: The dental hygienist I had last time I attended the dentist six months ago almost made me not go back today. Luckily, that bitch was gone and there was a much better hygienist with the greenest eyes I've ever seen. It's like that light blue face mask set those green eyes ablaze. Anyway, the last hygienist I had was not really a bitch but as she was cleaning my teeth, she kept wiping the instruments on the bib I was wearing, instead of a separate piece of gauze, which seemed intuitively wrong. As she wiped, she told me the story of plaque, which basically goes like this, "bugs shit in your mouth."
Then at one point, when my mouth was full of water and my own scraped-off mouth-filth, she asked me if I wanted her to suction it out but in order to answer, I had to swallow and she was all, "Geez, most people don't want to swallow that," and I was thinking that neither did I and that she should have just suctioned, not asked.
Then, before she started scraping, she held up a pair of darkened safety glasses and said, "you're going to want to put these on."
"Why?" I asked and as she struggled with a nicer way to say it, I asked, "splashback?"
"Yes," she said. I found it really strange and I had never, never, ever had anyone offer safety glasses to shield me from my own spit. I put them on but I really didn't want to. Once they were on my face, I could see they were totally spotted with dried liquid. Other people's splashback. Gross. After I removed them, I noticed that she just rinsed them off under the sink, very briefly. Ew. Ew. Ew.
Then at the end, she asked me if I wanted to wipe my face with my bib. Did she mean the bib that she had wiped all my mouth funk? Is that what she meant? Yes, it was. I did not do it. I did not give in to pressure and wipe my own face with my own mouth. She thought I was really weird. In short, it was one of the least hygienic experiences I've had in a while.
3/11/2009
Ever so sorry
Last night was specifically set aside to write a blog but instead I had a glass of wine and fell asleep. Ever so sorry. I'm having trouble coming up with topics too. Maybe some wonderfully hilarious things will happen to me in the next few days and I'll write the best blog entry ever.
3/02/2009
I almost forgot
Look, things are crazy around here right now. So, this actually happened two weeks ago but I'm just getting around to posting now. The Heated tea towels are being sold by their first physical store. It's a bakery in Canada! Dartmouth, Nova Scotia to be precise. Tara of Two If By Sea Bake Shop actually taught herself to bake, not unlike how I taught myself to screen print. We're goddamn kindred spirits. She did get our description slightly off as Jenny does not play an instrument in The Heated but since my goal was to get a collective going on under the name of The Heated, and she pretty much contributes to everything but the actual music, including roadie duties so...
2/25/2009
Sometimes I hate the city I love
This morning, my walk to work was miserable. Buckets of rain were coming down. I had rolled my pants up before I left the house (I'm bringing pegged pants back, people) but had underestimated how bad it was and by the time I was rounding the corner in front of my workplace the front of my pants were soaked. On the sidewalk in front was a large pile of syringes along with a few crack pipes and used plastic lighters. Drug addicts suck.
My building has a security guard so I let him know on my way in. I told him that if he called the police they could give him the number for the Needlestick Hotline. Yes, such a thing exists. A hotline solely dedicated to syringes. Drug addicts suck. They suck so much.
The reason that I know about the hotline is because months earlier, over the summer, there had been a similar situation outside my apartment building. Except instead of just syringes dumped on the sidewalk, they were in an open shoebox. It wasn't really a shoe box, it was a box for a cell phone but it looked to be about the same size as a shoe box. Just overflowing with syringes.
I saw it on my way out of the apartment with my wife. I called the police as we walked to the store. They were the ones who told me about the Needlestick Hotline. The Needlestick Hotline was not in service over the weekend but their message gave me a city department to call. I called the city department. I was promptly put on hold and forgotten about. I called back and had a tense moment with the woman on the other line who instantly softened once the situation with the box had been made clear. She let me know that someone would be by in the next couple of hours to pick it up.
It was just sitting there and dogs could have run up and sniffed it or a kid could have run up and tried to touch the orange plastic caps. I resolved to get it off the street as soon as we got back from the store. As we came down from the top of the street on the return trip, there were two people hunched over the box. They were taking pictures with a very nice camera as their nice, new station wagon sat running at the curb. I had a strong urge to walk up and punch them in the mouth. They could hear the party that my upstairs neighbor was having for their six year old son. They could see that this horrible, filthy box was sitting on the sidewalk for anyone to stick themselves with and they decided that the best thing to do about it, the most sensible plan of action, was to fucking taking pictures! You assholes. People suck. They suck and they suck and sometimes I hate living in San Francisco.
I have seem homeless people stop beggging to answer their cell phones. I once saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of God-knows-what (boxes full of syringes, apparently) with a Bluetooth headset on. I have seen people smoke crack, swing at each other with baseball bats, fight on the train. Of course, urine pools abound and the other day someone shit in one of those tunnels construction crews build when the sidewalk is closed. It hadn't been there in the morning but then, on my way home, human feces in the tunnel, which is even worse because it means someone felt free enough to do that IN BROAD DAYLIGHT! There is nothing worse than coming across someone using the street as a toilet. And to the homeless man who sleeps in front of Flax, I SHOULD NOT KNOW WHAT YOUR PENIS LOOKS LIKE!
My building has a security guard so I let him know on my way in. I told him that if he called the police they could give him the number for the Needlestick Hotline. Yes, such a thing exists. A hotline solely dedicated to syringes. Drug addicts suck. They suck so much.
The reason that I know about the hotline is because months earlier, over the summer, there had been a similar situation outside my apartment building. Except instead of just syringes dumped on the sidewalk, they were in an open shoebox. It wasn't really a shoe box, it was a box for a cell phone but it looked to be about the same size as a shoe box. Just overflowing with syringes.
I saw it on my way out of the apartment with my wife. I called the police as we walked to the store. They were the ones who told me about the Needlestick Hotline. The Needlestick Hotline was not in service over the weekend but their message gave me a city department to call. I called the city department. I was promptly put on hold and forgotten about. I called back and had a tense moment with the woman on the other line who instantly softened once the situation with the box had been made clear. She let me know that someone would be by in the next couple of hours to pick it up.
It was just sitting there and dogs could have run up and sniffed it or a kid could have run up and tried to touch the orange plastic caps. I resolved to get it off the street as soon as we got back from the store. As we came down from the top of the street on the return trip, there were two people hunched over the box. They were taking pictures with a very nice camera as their nice, new station wagon sat running at the curb. I had a strong urge to walk up and punch them in the mouth. They could hear the party that my upstairs neighbor was having for their six year old son. They could see that this horrible, filthy box was sitting on the sidewalk for anyone to stick themselves with and they decided that the best thing to do about it, the most sensible plan of action, was to fucking taking pictures! You assholes. People suck. They suck and they suck and sometimes I hate living in San Francisco.
I have seem homeless people stop beggging to answer their cell phones. I once saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of God-knows-what (boxes full of syringes, apparently) with a Bluetooth headset on. I have seen people smoke crack, swing at each other with baseball bats, fight on the train. Of course, urine pools abound and the other day someone shit in one of those tunnels construction crews build when the sidewalk is closed. It hadn't been there in the morning but then, on my way home, human feces in the tunnel, which is even worse because it means someone felt free enough to do that IN BROAD DAYLIGHT! There is nothing worse than coming across someone using the street as a toilet. And to the homeless man who sleeps in front of Flax, I SHOULD NOT KNOW WHAT YOUR PENIS LOOKS LIKE!
2/18/2009
We have a winner
The results from the contest are in! Some of you tried to tempt me by mentioning your adorable children or by stroking my ego by telling me how lovely the towels are. Believe me, that sort of stuff usually works like a charm. But this was based purely on the luck of the draw, not on how awesome you make me feel.
Here we go:
Here we go:
- Third place winner of a lovely (but not quite the finished design) tea towel is Radford. You may not know what a tea towel is but once you get your hands on one... you'll probably leave it folded in a drawer forever. Best of luck with that.
- In second place we have Lindsay. Bonus points for using the work "bitchen" in your comment. Way to keep it classy.
- And the first place winner of a Clementine Tea Towel is Angie... but there were two Angies so I'll have to differentiate here and say Angie #1. The one who left this comment, "I came across your etsy shop. Your Heated Cup tea towel drew my interest. Angie". My apologies to Angie #2 for I certainly got your hopes up only to dash them... it was kind of fun for me but maybe sucked a little for you.
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