baboon county, usa

_____or can i?

_____hello, poppets. things have happened since last i laid word for you, but i'm going to skip pretty much all of it here. here's the freshest of the fresh songs:

i saw sparks

i'm not looking for perfection out of you
i won't wait in bed for my favorite shade of blue
the sky looks quite nice in a million different shades
i'm not tied to the picture that i've made

it's alright by me if you don't love by the book
and when you look at me, you see every heart you shook
i'm not going to love you any less
i've got my own life to confess
----------
let's take a little walk
through the trees into the park
by the seaside, to your heart
seems to me it can't be that far

and even if it is
and we run out of light
it'd be an awful shame
to stay inside tonight
-----------
let's draw the pictures of
the photographs that we thought
we could take some other time
sidewalk chalk the outlines
of the best of all the
memories that we've left behind
-----------
when all the shapes are made
we can lay ourselves right down
among the brightest shades
from the brightest shops
in the brightest part of this town
-----------
you gotta
pair of bright blue eyes i thought i'd
come to recognize but i can't
hold them in my mind
after all this time they still take me by surprise

we may never be
a perfect match but i wanna see
you turn around your hat
you're a little short
to kiss me, i'm a little tall
but, honey, we can work with that

_____last night, i was pretty proud of it. at the moment, i'm only vaguely glad it exists, but that is a temporary thing and i think i will end up liking it in the future. the guitar part changes where i have the lines of dashes. unlike many of my songs, this one skips around a fair amount. the idea was for it to be x number of mini-songs that are semi-related lyrically and all spring from the same subject. the second section and the fourth section have essentially the same guitar part aside from hanging on one chord for an extra line the second time through. as lyrics go, the third and fourth part were combined originally, but i thought the song was in that groove too long that way and it was harder to sing. i think i am slowly moving away from lyrics that read well and trying to find ones that sing well. hopefully, i have some that can work for both purposes.

_____it's always a concern of mine that songs are taken the wrong way. naturally, some things are left to interpretation, but some things seem so clear when i write them and i find out later that they are not. it's just that i have assigned some meaning to a line or a stanza or something and i don't consider any other view on it. if you like the way i didn't intend, that's groovy. if you don't like something i write, you clearly missed what i was getting at. you're bad and you should feel bad........ oh, jk/lol.... lighten up, man. i don't even like a lot of my stuff a lot of the time.

_____it is also a concern that a lot of the what and why from a set of lyrics slides right on by the audience. this is not due to inattentiveness by y'all. oh no. this is because there is no way to even speculate as to which words i wrestled with and why i chose the ones i did and so on and so on. bearing that in mind, i'll see what i can do to walk you through this one. just as an example.

_____the title was a suggestion. it might have been an accidental suggestion, but it stuck. when all is said and done, this will be one of my top two means of generating titles.

_____the first four lines are pretty straightforward: "i have an idea of 'perfection' and even though you aren't it, you make me happy and who knows what 'perfect' is good for anyway?". it isn't about settling; it's about not needing perfection to be happy and loving the good and the bad. the next four lines are along the same path: "we don't have to be like a fairy tale/i know you have your misgivings from hurting somebody and being hurt before/we've both got some of that and we can still have something good" the last line in this section is a mirror of a line from "pirate radio" (which is here). this is done by writers sometimes to establish themes through their writing or to invoke thoughts or feelings from another work which they can fit into a relatively small amount of space by said reference. whenever i talk about actual literary stuff, i think i sound like i am some big time intellectual who is stooping down to enlighten you about things that are clearly so far beyond you but easy for me to understand. i don't really think that, i'm very much an amateur at this and i am fairly sure you all understand writing principles. i try to offset the brainier-than-thou vibe by saying it like i'm the hugest buns-hole ever so the sheer weight of the condescending tone lets you know it is not serious. anyway...

_____the next section (part one) centers on recent conversations. really, they were just passing references to recreational walks, but i liked the idea a bunch. bunches and bunches, just like bananas. the weather lately has been great for it, by the way. i listed a few places i had pondered walks to that fit the scheme well. the idea was to get that "a" sound in the last word of each line, more or less. they don't rhyme, but they are close enough in sound and length to work well here. the last three lines were all given that "ee" sound towards the front end by design. if you were going to lay the second and third line together, one on top of the other, and sectioned them off by syllable "the" matches up, as do "trees"/"sea(s)", "to", and the "ar" sound in "park" and "heart". that is highly intentional. mostly, it just sounds good singing it that way. i don't know if this is true or not, but i have it in my head that jack johnson pulls that trick sometimes. i can cite no evidence to that end, i just always think of him when i do write something like that. the last line, aside from easing the song out of that mini-groove of similar sounding lines, is about thinking love is just around the corner and it won't be long. in short, optimism.

_____part two of the second section is a simple little rhyme about rethinking the line that precedes it. you know... "so what if we don't fall madly in love? maybe the sun sets on this thing, but i'd rather give it a shot and at least enjoy the walk for what it's worth." this is typical brian lucido fare. after all, i am just an emotional wuss.

_____ah, section three... this is where i decided i was going to like this song. here's where i say "hey, things used to be great.... i really thought i was going to have more time to soak that in. if i had known it wouldn't last, i would have tried to memorize it all (take pictures) so i could see myself back there whenever i wanted." pronouns are often overlooked. i wanted this section to be a "we" portion of the song because it has been pretty one-sided so far. even though the word "we" has been used before this, we only get a look into the one person's view. he wants to give it a shot and he has enough optimism to outweigh his misgivings. he asks his lady-love to join him in this, but we've got no idea if she is on the same page or if she is completely disinterested or what. we don't get a lot of insight into her side of things, because (i don't think this is necessarily in the song, just my thinking) he is telling this story and he just doesn't know what she is thinking. so, while he talks about remembering the good times and trying to recapture them as best they can (a drawing can't match a photograph, but it has it's own charms), he lets us know that neither of them thought they were dealing with such a short-term thing. you know, they both thought they would have time to take those pictures later on. we don't hear from her again. sidewalk chalk was, for one reason or another, the first thing i thought of when i thought of drawing a picture big enough to put yourself in. and yes, i used "sidewalk chalk" as a verb. i stand by it. the section closes with the appeal to get back into all the best stuff that fell by the wayside.

_____section four is a personal favorite. i like the idea of taking so much care to find the most vibrant sidewalk chalk in the whole town to try to put themselves back in the really great times. it's a little funny to me that they are so thorough picking the chalk but they are only concerned with local chalks. who knows how bright they are making chalk in other parts of the county? i think it is probably best to assume that this town is famous for leading the world in quality sidewalk drawing implements. really though, you can only spend so much time trying to find the right chalk (find the right words, moment, whatever it happens to be) before you are cutting deeply into the time when you could be laying down on the sidewalk and letting the good times roll. the purpose behind all that brightness (which i really tried to nail home, noticably) was twofold. the first is that the memories deserve to be depicted in only the finest chalks. we can't go back there exactly, but these pictures are going to be so great that we'll be having all sorts of new fun. the second driving force there is to establish what this guy means when he says "bright". when he says "bright", he means that we are dealing with some transcendent, glorious brightness. he is just crazy about the brightness. also, i'm calling back to some of the words that were used in the first section to tie it all together somewhat. it goes from "the picture that i've made" to making pictures together, from having an idea about one perfect shade of blue to experiencing all the great shades that are out there waiting to be found. we're building towards a resolution.

_____section 5... here, the song moves towards a bunch of 7th chords. for lack of a better description, 7th chords exist primarily in the key of funk. i'm not all that good at raining the funk from on high, but this is certainly the funk portion of the song. mostly it's just a lighter, more upbeat part. this is also where setting up the brightness pays off. here are the things that are bright to this guy: the finest chalks in all the world and her beautiful blue eyes. her eyes are so great that he can't even remember them when he isn't looking at them. he can't recreate the effect in his head, so every time she looks at him, it's breathtaking. the very last cluster of lines brings it back to that idea of not chasing perfection and then goes on to ask for a kiss, which is, of course, symbolic of giving the whole thing another go. for reference, turning one's hat around is a sign that you are going for a kiss in the music of brian lucido. so, if she takes him up on his offer here, she'll let him know that she's in by turning her hat around so they can kiss in a big romantic finish. the problem is that she's too short to kiss him if she is the only one making the effort and he is too tall to give her a proper kiss if he's doing all the work. he downplays the magnitude of the issue (a little short/a little tall) and, symbolically, all the problems which might arise because of their differences before promising that things will be great if they both make an effort and meet in the middle for this kiss/the whole relationship.

_____i used the word "honey" in the last line because, as i've mentioned, "i wanna be a singer like lou reed"(pixies - i've been tired). in my favorite part of my favorite velvet underground song of all time, new age, lou reed sings "i'll come running to you honey when you want me". calling somebody "honey" means that to me. i was really glad that fit into this song even though nobody would know why if i didn't tell them.

_____so, there's your tour of the song. the way i look at writing lyrics is this: you have all these things that go into making each individual line what it is and then those pieces make up the whole of the song. each line is lesser than the parts you put into it, but the song as a whole is greater than the sum of the lines so it sort of works out. sort of.

_____in conclusion, "you got me in a spin, but everything is A OK" (love that song)

_____you know, i don't have much to write about at the moment. if i had a few more comments to guide me... sure... maybe then. as it stands, my moustache is approaching annoying, my new, old guitar is awesome but i don't have my amp here, i haven't written a song in several days. that's the news from lake wobegon.
_____i was playing this mario fortress sort of game tonight and it reminded me of this e-mail that i wrote to beth jorgensen. armed with little else to do, i read through a bunch of the e-mails i sent her during our most recent brush with friendship/romance (this was centered around last fall/winter). i really think i did some of my best writing in those e-mails. i would say she inspired most of my best cute mushy stuff, but nobody wants to read that. as i have nothing new to convey to y'all, i'll reprint some of my favorite e-mail excerpts here. yes, it's a clip show, but it's previously unreleased material, so it's not that bad.

_____(i already forgot the name of this e-mail)
_____"after the fellas dispersed, rachel asked me if i had any thoughts on the best way to defeat a snake that was large enough to be person-thick. (many of these conversations center on fighting a smaller animal, but person-sized) my solution was simple and elegant. wait until the snake sheds it's skin and then steal the skin. bring this skin back to the villagers and tell them you have slain the dread beast. tell them that the great battle weakened you so that you ate the snake in it's entirety, saving only the skin as proof of your victory. furthermore, declare that your primitive god appeared to you in the aftermath, declaring that man shall not journey to the valley of the snake henceforth. the snake would eventually die, unaware, but shamed and over the generations you would become legendary, your lie made truth by the belief of the village progeny."

_____(from "eureka, california")
_____"so i was fighting some ninjas today (more like sparring actually. it was basically a spontaneous practice session... no weapons or anything) and all of the sudden, pope john paul II came to me, robes ablaze, and requested that i show him to my computer and the attached "inter-net" which he has been hearing so much about and invented (he used only the contents of a single easy-bake oven with most of the bulb left over(from which he fashioned a set of pan pipes)). so he took a look at it and fixed that e-mail sending issue right up. he said that the problem derived from the modifications others have made to his original design of inter-netting. apparently, along the way, some cheap bastard had decided to use less expensive, difficult-bake technology. "cheap bastard"... his exact words. the rest he spoke in a rural latin dating to the turn of the first century, all the while signing in a vaguely polish influenced aramaic, which compensated for my gaps in latin (always been a third century guy myself, but such it is). we exchanged pleasantries for a time before he shouted the cryptic phrase "HUGH DOWNS.... AWAY!!"(family guy...) and flew to the north pole, where he doubles as sandy claws."

_____it is worth mentioning at this time that when i write things that are just crazy, i count that as good writing. that short time when everything good was attributed spectacularly to il papa was just a good time all around.

_____(from "i'll squeeze into heaven and valentine")
_____"so, i've been playing this game where you have to defend your base from on-rushing enemies. it starts out where you are just a lone nut with a gun, a base, and unlimited ammo(provided you reload now and then). for the first few levels, there are just some guys with pistols who run at the base and then shoot at it if they make it there. eventually, there are these guys with bazookas who do more damage than those initial guys. i believe the next upgrade of guy rides some sort of cannon up to your wall and then reaches back to light it and fires upon the ol' castle. beyond that, there is the tank, which is slow, but takes many, many bullets. now, it would hardly be fair if the enemigos got to do all the upgrading. you see, for 5000 in cash money (which is equivalent to icing 50 pistolmans(contrary to popular belief, "pistolmen" is not the preferred nomenclature) or 25 bazookajoes), you can make a level 1 base defense turret, which amounts to a rock launcher that occasionally hits successfully. so, for 10 large, you have one of those on each end of the base. now, the second level of turret is faster, more accurate, about 75% more "the shit" than the first. as there is more demand in the market for the superior model, the cost is double that of the original offering. one's ability to afford such things in duplicate coincides quite approximately with the dawning of the age of cannonjockeys. these daring fellows must have crossed somebody with much coin because they carry a $300 bounty for their permanent dismissal. upon purchasing the two star model, one learns the exorbitant fee associated with the third and ultimate star. one wonders if one might pick up a paper route in one of the thriving communities that no doubt surround the base. one ponders the viability of working nights at the mill for several years for a single $250,000 model 3, which must be made with bits of real, endangered panthers who are naturally encrusted with flawless diamonds. but it seems the mill and the newspaper printing press have, sadly, been converted into massive factories that produce automatic, systematic, hydro-matic... base-attacking tanks. these tanks carry a headless, bodyless bounty of 400 clams (in the, uh, parlance of our times) and are apparently more profitable than anything black and white and read all over. additionally, their lofty bounty allows me to halt my search for a job on the side. it seems everybody is getting fat off these tanks. days pass. weeks. many calendar pages are carefully filled, X'd, and discarded. at last, long last, a single turret is afforded. truly this is defense suited for God's own two-story suburban castle just beyond the limits of the great city in the sky (He commutes). no, the joneses will not be keeping up with this one. twin machine guns with ammunition closer to the size of the peach than its pit and a state-of-the-art target sensor. yowch. i could see the import of leveling the now-lopsided abode. magazine subscriptions were cancelled, fruit by the foot comsumption was cut fully in half, and the proverbial and literal belts were tightened across the board. eventually the day came, the cover of Home Defense Quarterly was graced, and the aged guard dog at last slept peacefully through the night, waking, refreshed, to the understated, almost shadowy smell of bacon gently sizzling in a long-empty pan. free to retire from unabashed sniping, i turned my attention toward giving back to the community. many writers, type-setters and millers were out of work by this time as the tank industry had become lagely streamlined by the introduction of the assembly line and automation. robots, capable of doing the work of 35 men, 60 children or 3 Ninjas made the factory owners mad cash, but left the townspeople clawing, for a time, unheard at the screen door of the good life enjoyed by their former employers. articles of corporation were drafted and a modest initial public offering comprised of 50,000 shares in Fortress Enterprises at 13 1/8 got the ball rolling on reconstructing the lives of these good sirs and madams. today FortEnt employs 250 people in three varied and exciting career paths. the workforce includes 100 repairmen (don't call them repairmans or the union will come after you), 100 tower guards, and 50 highly trained comHub technicians who keep the largely superfluous option of a 100% effective air strike at my constant command. so well run is the comHub that it is possible to keep the now-robotic enemy forces under a near-constant barrage of sky-borne terror, rendering them unable to advance within 100 paces of the inner wall of FortEnt. with victory assured in each approaching skirmish and fruit by the foot flowing as though by the mile, i feel the time has come for me to take a real vacation, secure in the knowledge that my modest two-bedroom home is amply protected by a loyal army.... nay...... family.... at the heart of Home Defense Quarterly's three-time Base Of The Year.
Sincerely,
Brian A. Lucido
CEO, Fortress Enterprises"

_____i've probably ruined any friendship that we might have come away with by this point. again. it makes me quite sad at times because she's great and we have an amazing time together when we're getting along, but i don't honestly know if i could handle being friends with her. when we are good, we have no business not being more and when we fall out of that, we can't even talk to each other. the problem we ran into was that we are both too stubborn about insignificant things. be that the merits of the tv show commander in chief (i maintain that a woman president is not an interesting premise at all) or the classification of the name chevy chase (i maintain that it is not a stage name although his given name is cornelius), we fought about such strange things that we couldn't even try to avoid it. sure, one or both of us could have backed down, but once there was a point of contention it was too late for either of us. if we wanted to avoid talking about things that we might potentially argue about, we would not be able to talk about anything at all. at this point, we don't.
_____if i had any confidence that it would work and i wasn't a coward, i'd want to give the friend thing a shot with her. we really are good at it. and aside from that, she prompted some of my best lyric/poem writing. here are some examples:

from http://www.geocities.com/lucidogg/poesa.html :
Pirate Radio, Bestill, and the weird, weird Restless Drive

_____also, her sister (Janelle L Cool J) met a boy and fell in like and that got this one going:

you know those teeth-bared speeches
the big tough guys give
to the boyfriends of little sisters

well, i don't have the strength or the
gravel cowboy voice to tell it right
but i think you know the ones i mean

you know those ones where they channel clint eastwood
yeah, i saw paint your wagon....
but can we try to stay on point?

well, i can't string the words just so
to make you lose your nerve
but i think you get the idea

(lyric-less journey through verse chord progression)

it's not that i don't want her
to find the love she seeks
but if you touch her, i'll break your face

(lyric-less journey through verse chord progression)

well, i don't have the strength or the
gravel cowboy voice to tell it right
but i think you know the one i mean

_____i had sort of forgotten that one until tonight, but i think it will make it into my main song rotation. yeah... really like that one. b-crest out.

_____i went up to visit my friend tim over this last weekend. mike and i drove up to rochester friday and watched some curb your enthusiasm before i went home and he took off for a tournament in chicago. it was good to get some quality driving time in with him. i think he and i will probably be pretty good friends. see, it's funny cause we've been tight since we were six years old.
_____at home, i got to spend some time with my parents. my sister had been telling my mother about the rock and roll show i had put on for her and my mother figured the folks were overdue for a show. after a monster of a pepper game, which i inevitably won through a skillful combination of daring bids and kung fu technique (ant lion sytle), the stage was set. the stage, in this case, was a short stool and foot rest to hold my laptop (which is to say "lyrics book") set against the stunning backdrop of my parents' living room. if you wish to picture some other venue, that may enhance this story for you. i would suggest alpine valley, first avenue, red rocks, the chicago theatre, or, if you are ambitious for me, madison square garden or the acropolis. or my parents' basement. i leave that to the reader as an excercise. i think i ended up playing for an hour and a half or two hours. i played my two new songs and a few other ones of mine, which they had heard before when i was not as halfway decent at singing. then i did some covers, including but not limited to:
day old blues - kings of leon (high parts and all)
born on a train - arcade fire
jacksonville - sufjan stevens
casimir pulaski day - sufjan stevens
yoshimi battles the pink robots pt 1 - flaming lips
waitin' for a superman - flaming lips
she don't use jelly - flaming lips (a brief run through)
hotel california - eagles (by quasi-request, first time in a few years playing it)
if i had a million dollars - barenaked ladies (by request, both vocal parts, first time playing it)

_____i think it went pretty well for the most part. for one reason or another, i can't remember how some parts of hotel california go, even with the lyrics in front of me. if i had a million dollars was an adventure. i'm not sure when the last time was that i heard that song and i have never been a master of breath control, so singing both parts was a little tricky. it went quite a bit better than i expected though. so far, the concensus is that my new songs sound better than they read. if you want me to, i'd probably play for you, dear reader. here are some folks that i want to play for, off the top of my head:

emma frank (i haven't forgotten that promise)
brenna burns (i haven't forgotten the time i wussed out on that pixies song)
anybody in any band that i am, have been, or propose to be in, real or imaginary
rachel bottjen (a person ought to hear songs that are about them eventually)
anne krebsbach (she's all kinds of coolio)
jodi gullicksrud (she's got a stake in one of my songs and she hears all my emotional stuff)
katie rodemyer (honestly, i don't know how to spell that name, to this day)
any and all family members, especially my aunts, uncles and my grandma bonnie
kelley strobl (provided i get to see her)
victoria (provided boring stuff you don't want to hear about)
beth, janelle, and the rest of the jorgensen bunch (provided they don't hate me)
amanda wilson (provided i ever have to good fortune to see her again)

_____i'll probably think of a bunch more people specifically, but that's what popped in to my head. yes, they are mostly girls. most of the guys i would want to play for fall into that band category. i don't know if i play much stuff that i would feel confident playing for non-musician guys at this point. mostly because i write wussy, emotional stuff. once i get that evel knievel song going, we'll see.
_____so, after the rock and roll show, i went up to tim's in minneapolis. he is all manner of depressed about a girl, which gave us plenty to talk or not talk about. he soothed his tender soul with a cool, sort of old computer game (wizards and longbowmen and hamlets and things) and i sat on his amp and noodled around on his electric guitar for several hours. some friends of his drifted in and out of his room during all this excitement and they were to my liking. i'm not going to say his friend kate wasn't really cute. that would be an untruth if i said that. however, i was digging on the guitar thoroughly enough that i refrained from hitting on her. probably for the best. just fooling around on an electric again made me want to invest in a better electric than the one i have and pick up some recording equipment. i'm fairly confident that once i get playing on an electric regularly again, i will write different styles of songs. that is always welcome. now, be careful here not to imagine me writing "when i come around" or "smells like teen spirit". more along the lines of the cat power version of "still in love". simple, pleasant variations on a simple, pleasant guitar line. i'd like to get away from the straight chords that i end up using a lot of when i playe my acoustic. writing a song to record would open up a lot of things instrumentally because i wouldn't have to be able to play the guitar part while i was singing. at this point in my progression, having to do two things at once is fairly limiting. it is my ultimate goal to sound like there are two guys doing what i am doing. one guy singing and one guy ruling the guitar. from conversations i have had with a few people, this is apparently an odd distinction to make. guys who come to mind are james taylor, paul simon, nick drake... you listen closely to the guitar part and think "there is no way that is being played by the same guy who is singing". whether it is just that difficult sounding on its own or it is operating on a completely different rhythm or it just sounds too dead on for a guy who is doing two things... there is a level of skill where this becomes standard. i'll get there.
_____the rest of the weekend consisted of a couple disc throwing sessions, steering generally clear of a party downstairs at tim's house, reading a little vonnegut, trying to put food in front of tim often enough for him to eventually eat some of it, and several hours of watching battlestar galactica (read: "awesome-star sweet-ass-tica") . overall, i had a very good time. we didn't get in any of the band practice type stuff we were planning on, but band practice is elusive quarry. i'm not sure if tim was in better spirits after all that, but i'm getting there. my appetite is 80% back and i almost always don't want to die. truthfully, i didn't want to die before, but in literature sometimes people will use hyperbole to get a point across. the appetite number, however, is not hyper-anything. that is just factual. in all observable ways, tim seems to be a couple weeks behind me in his trek. i wouldn't wish it on him by any means, but it is a little bit reassuring to see a virtual snapshot of myself a few weeks ago and know that i am making progress. i'm not sure whether to classify it as a hope or a fear, but i can tell that i am getting better at recovering from heartbreak. it's something that is sort of useful to be good at, but practice is required. i certainly didn't want to get good at this, but here i am, practicing again. a lot of people go through something tough and cover whatever ache they have with anger and the like until it goes away, but i try to make a concerted effort to avoid that. it might be a somewhat easier route to take in some respects. transitioning from anger to not caring seems an easier move than to go from a lot of good feelings to indifference. i guess i just feel a certain sense of pride for trying to keep the negativity out of it. at the end of the day though, trying to stay positive is a lot easier than actually staying positive. i am not always steadfast in my determination and i misstep frequently. you probably won't know about any of the bad thoughts and feelings that creep in, but they do and i'm sorry for them, even in their silent, short lives. practice, practice, practice.
_____in less introspective news, i picked up a couple tickets for the mates of state show next week at the m-shop. i got up there and she asked how many tickets i wanted and it didn't feel right to say "one" for a show i am so excited about, so i said "two". anybody interested in a free mates of state show? i won't be offended if you have never listened to them and you are just going because a concert (and possibly highjinx) sounds like a good time. or if you just like hanging out with me, that is fine, too. anybody?
_____of course, there is much more to say, but i am going to let it slide to another day. what is there to say you ask? oh...... the stories that the lord has made/and the observations you could do without. and even if you were going to ask nice, i am le tired.

_____today had it's rough spots. i was planning on driving home last night, but i found out my sister wasn't getting in until late and i needed a little face time with some friends in ames. i felt great as soon as i walked in the door and passable as soon as i walked out. that's a marked improvement. thank you for that. again.
_____so i drove up to rochester this morning and got about an hour in with my sister (sister/favorite person in the world) before it was time to go to Don Squier's funeral. Anne came down from the twin cities and came to our house beforehand so she could go with us. she is another one of my sister's best friends from the rochester days. she used to drive me to math in the morning when i was splitting time between middle school and high school and i've always been a big fan of hers. which is to say we are big fans of each other. i do pretty well in that best friend's cool little brother role and i may or may not have had a crush on her for a portion of my life. i will say this: there were a few years when i was dating my first girlfriend (an adorable redhead) and anne (another excellent redhead) was hanging out at our house a lot. i was pretty convinced that all other colors of hair were foolishness. utter foolishness. the crush has died down over the years, but i was still pretty happy that we ended up being dates for my sister's wedding a couple years ago. she's just very cool and she unintentionally talks like mitch hedberg a fair amount of the time. she's working for wcco radio up in the twin citrus (the big orange) and apparently does something with a&r for a small recording label. pretty cool of her. i'm hoping to hang out with her this weekend when i go up there to play guitar with my friend tim. i think i am the only one who calls minneapolis and st. paul the twin citrus or the big orange. i don't expect it to catch on but it is hard wired in my mind now so i can't turn back.
_____anyway... we all went to the service and it was pretty nice. it seems a poor thing to get critical about, but the residing minister had pretty poor delivery. that was unfortunate because she did a lot of talking. she said some great things and that is the most important part. i imagine they get a lot of people in seminary who are just not all that charismatic or good at speaking in front of people in an interesting manner. i know for certain that they get a lot of very charismatic people too, but they get enough people that there must be a whole heap of people that are not naturals. i imagine these people are taught from a book what sort of phrasing to use and how to construct paragraphs and basic methods of organizing words on various scales. in my mind, all these people do the homework and end up having roughly the same skills and style. while it is not all that riveting or creative, they get the job done in a satisfactory manner. this minister could have been any one of those people. there were several times today (and there have been many in my life) when i thought that it would not be a terrible idea for me to pursue a life in the ministry. spirituality would do good things for me, for starters. there is a great stability that people can gain from it if they treat it right. i think i would like the work of a minister. i'm a good public speaker and a better writer. i think there are few pertinent skills that i would not excel at either naturally or with some training. here's the problem: if i end up a garbage man... fine. i wouldn't be passionate about it but i could handle it and i wouldn't feel like i was cheating the garbage or the people who relied on me to pick it up because i lacked a firm belief in what i was doing. a job as a minister is one of those jobs where i think i would need to feel deeply moved in order to even entertain the idea seriously. i could still do that job without believing absolutely in it, but even if i didn't let on that i wasn't 100% sold, the guilt would destroy me. i wish i were more religious. i'm not clear on my motives for that though and i don't want to get into it for the wrong reasons. we can talk about that sometime if you want.
_____i don't think i'm ready right now to touch on all the thoughts i've been having about mortality and the fleeting now. maybe once i wrap my head around a few things a little better. it's just awful big.
_____after our folks went to bed tonight, my sister and i went down to the basement and i played her a bunch of my songs. the setlist was as follows:

unfinished new song
debt to the ether
a lesson in will
my final bellyache
never after
my walrus
radmobile!
the ballad of hank scorpio
good night (4x)
walking home
thousand words of view

_____i was pretty pleased with how it went. i wasn't all that nervous about the singing, which is a big change. my voice actually sounded pretty good for a lot of the songs, too. i'm getting the hang of it, but i didn't remember how it was supposed to go for a few of the old songs and i haven't quite figured out what a part is supposed to sound like in that unfinished one. i did "never after" a whole step lower than i think i used to do it. i was pretty sure i used to capo it on the second fret all those months ago when i played it semi-regularly but when i played the guitar part once through with no capo i thought "hey, i can hit that first part, no problem" so i stuck with it. it gets lower later on and i bottomed out of my comfortable range. lesson learned. i'm all manner of excited about music these days.
_____i know you all care so here is the update: as of the start of writing this entry, i had listened to "famous blue raincoat" 14 times. the number currently stands at 20. 117, here i come.

_____for starters, i feel terrible right now. i was having a pretty decent night, really. i did alright at practice aside from feeling like my legs were going to fall off. the fantasy football draft fell through, but i had a nice dinner with some brisbois family members (always time well spent) and got to hang out with mike and joe for a while, watching a good football game. notably, rachel bottjen and i are back to being great friends; we had a hug tonight that was long overdue and extremely cathartic. i love that girl.
_____i checked my e-mail in mike's room to see if Victoria had e-mailed me (she had not) and i had an e-mail from my mother telling me that Don Squier passed on. he wasn't a large part of my life directly. he is the father of my sister's old best friend from elementary/middle/high school. our families used to go to high school football games together and hit up baker's square and things like that. if you spend any time with the Squiers, it is evident that they are very kind, good people. i always knew that if i had any trouble, i could go to them and they would take care of me even though i was only on the fringe of their lives. growing up down the street from them, it didn't really come up but it was really comforting to know it was there.
_____earlier this year, i ran into some trouble with a speeding ticket in wisconsin. it was something like 3-4am and they towed my mother's car because i wasn't supposed to drive until i got it cleared up. i got dropped off in some town in wisconsin (not the same town that the 5-0 had told me he was dropping me off in as it turned out) and my dad was out west while my mom was in new york so i didn't have any family to call. there are not too many phone numbers that i know off the top of my head. in rochester, i know how to get ahold of the parents of mike lun, kyle haas, mike blake, and emma frank. mike blake and emma go to school in eau claire, wisconsin so i called their parents to get their numbers. both sets of parents were very much asleep and very understanding. i called mike and emma, but neither of them answered after repeated attempts. i walked a few miles to some campus where i was offered drugs of various types by a kindly gentleman on a porch. eventually, he came to understand that i had no beers in my backpack. this was tough news for him. i walked onward to a 24 hour country kitchen where i ordered a lemonade and did my best to only cry in the bathroom. by this time, it was about 6am. i was down to the last phone number i had committed to memory, that of the Squier residence. i only knew it because i had called there to tell my sister dinner was ready once and they have a very easy phone number to remember. i called and let it ring about twenty times because i had nothing else to do. eventually, i got an answer and i explained what was going on as best i could through a sudden onslaught of tears. i was able to convey only that i was in this town in wisconsin at a country kitchen and i needed help. Don's wife, Cindy, was the one i was talking to. she relayed the small amount of information i was able to get across to Don and they assured me that they would leave straight away. armed with only a vague idea of what was happening and no knowledge at all of the broad hold the country kitchen company has in this town (something like four country kitchens... ridiculous), they tracked me down and came to my rescue. we went and got the car, and then they drove me and the car home. i finally succumbed to my exhaustion and got some sleep on the drive back. when Don dropped me off at my house, i did my best to thank him enough for what he and Cindy had just done for me and he played it off as if he'd just given me a couple pennies so i wouldn't have to break a twenty. just no big deal. i guess that is the sort of thing people routinely do for a guy they have a second hand connection with and haven't been in contact with for several years. at least for them it is. i'm still blown away by their kindness.
_____part two of Night Terrible was a brief conversation with Victoria. long story short: when she breaks a heart, she's very thorough. if i thought she was a cruel person, it would be easier to take, but i don't believe that about her. i think circumstances just combined to push our relationship from the verge of something wonderful to the point where i am no more than an annoyance. i guess a lot of it is my fault for pushing to hard to be friends right away after the romantic possibilities reached zero. i was trying to be good, honestly i was. i don't want to lose her from my life completely cause i care too much about her for that. i just want to move on to whatever is next with us. i didn't know my efforts were being seen so negatively. she didn't tell me i was screwing up until she was too fed up with me to even spend five minutes telling me what she needed me to do. she said she needed me to not talk to her right now and, in the end, i volunteered to not try again until the day after her birthday. she seemed more than content to be completely rid of me for two months. i can't describe how gut wrenching that is. i just want to know why and how it came to this and what i can do to make things ok again. instead i have a calendar in my mind with a big red circle around november 7th. so far, one big red X. 62 more days in the desert. i pray it's enough, but if it's not, i've got a birthday in january and we'll try again. i'm sorry.
_____here's a song i wrote while talking to my good friend tim schumann right after my vow of silence went into effect. it's called "debt to the ether":

on my judgment day
god will rush to meet me at the door
and he'll say son, you did alright
i'm gonna give you one chance more
to witness all your faults
and answer to your sins
tell me, little one
where you'd like to begin
to see your life again

and i will tell my father
well, you've been much more than fair
let's start with my saddest days
we can work right up from there
he'll warn me that the painful times
will be torture to relive
i'll say it's in my darkest hours
that i have the most to forgive
god, teach me to forgive

but, he will understand me
he will see my heart
he knows why the painful days
will be chosen for the start
he knows i will gladly bear them
in a row i'll see them through
so i can spend my last days in your arms
and my final hours on that beach with you
before i turn my gaze skyward
and drift right out of view


_____let me know what you think.
_____the over/under on the number of times i will listen to leonard cohen's "famous blue raincoat" in the next two months sits at 117. smart money is on the over. it's 9:14 am and i'm at 6 for today. fare thee well, my friends.

_____not much news to report, per usual. i am bored though, so i thought i would check in. lunbotron 20x6 and i made the journey back to the great recently whitened north. no hitches. that's a good guy right there.
_____aside from the crazy kevin's headline, they are all lyrics. you, personally, were probably not wondering, but you, personally, are only about one third of my audience (and outside my key demographic: veterans of foreign wars). put the awkwardness of that sentence in your pipe and pretend to smoke it so other people think you are cool, which you are not. you read that right.
_____nobody comments on any of my posts and that tends to take the wind from my sails. you have the power. please to be exercising it. that is all the blogging you non-commentin' no commenters get for now.

_____"And that's all it takes. Nothing more than a few words and the softest touch and your life is different, won't ever be the same again. Man dies, leaves you the mystery map to the secret island: happens every day. But you get a smile from someone you want: well that's special, that's worth the journey."
_____that's a quote from The Beach that i am partial to. here are more:
_____"You see, in a shark attack, or any other major tragedy I guess, the important thing is to get eaten and die, in which case there's a funeral and someone makes a speech and everyone cries and says what a good guy you were, or: get better in which case everyone can forget about it."
_____"I just thought we ought to spend some time together. We haven't had a chance to talk"
_____it is a bad feeling you get when a close friend speaks of good intentions and walks away. not far away so you can call on the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy for a small bit of comfort, just far enough that you know they aren't coming back.
_____make a wish

_____"i'd like to tell ya, like to tell ya, tell ya everything. cause nothing changes, ever changes, doesn't seem the same these days."
_____it's been a while since i rapped at cha, and, if you care, i apologize. as you probably don't care, i'll move right along. i've stopped taking the idea of finding a girl and ending up happy as a given. i've been alternating between being somewhat relieved by this and being severely disappointed. end transmission

so, kevin and i are starting a band (as you might recall) and we are going to play songs in this band. the band is currently titled something like Crazy Kevin and the Flying Kevins. i am the dynamic lead man, Crazy Kevin, and kevin is the band, the Flying Kevins. jon is also potentially one of the Flying Kevins. his level of participation is undetermined. lunbotron 20X6 will hopefully also play a role. i think MC Grant will have his hand forced and take on a role in the band as well. we'll see in a couple weeks when the frisbee house comes together at long last. quite a few interesting things have happened since my last post, but you don't come here for that. here's a song i wrote. i don't know whether or not it will fit in with the direction of the Kevins, but it will probably at least make an appearance as a solo effort. onward:

make your love a rocket ship
and fly me to the moon
sign it to a valentine
and send it to me soon
make your love an angel
waiting in the snow
write it on a post card
just let me know

paint it in a picture
and hang it on my wall
show me just a little sign
anything at all
make your love an arrow
and send it on your bow
send it to my waiting heart

just let me know if you want me to love you
let me know some how and some way
let me know if you want to be near me
let me know if you want me to stay

and i'll stay with you till tomorrow
i'll stay with you through the years
i'll stay with you just as long as you
say that you want me here

_____so, the poultry days ultimate tournament was this past weekend. i went to it. it was a pretty good time all around, from the entirely tolerable car ride to the sweet, sweet game of milk. we played a little ultimate too, which was largely successful. personally, i played sparingly, but the game i did play a lot in (against a tired older team) went swimmingly. the camping was pretty cool aside from the massive amounts of alcohol making its way through many of the people and the elusiveness of sleep i experienced in the tent. i think i have trouble sleeping at ultimate tournaments where i don't play most of the points. like my body summons a certain amount of energy for me to expend once i get to any tournament and if i don't completely exhaust myself playing then i have trouble sleeping for more than half an hour at a time. it makes for a pretty dull night when nobody around you seems to be having a similar problem. especially if you happen to be sleeping next to a particularily lovely girl with seemingly no trouble sleeping through the night, which i was. luckily the next day contained that sweet, sweet, aforementioned game of milk. one of the conversational highlights from the trip was as follows:
_____shawn brought up those hardee's ads where they say things like 'skinny little burgers are suitable for only housewives and little girls' and 'if you can't eat a cow in one sitting, you will never be upper-level management, let alone an astronaut, jerk'. schissel said something like "they will probably come out with one that says 'skinny little burgers are for people with white eyelashes'" (which shawn has). then i said something like 'yeah, they are slowly narrowing it down to just shawn walding.' pay attention, here's the comedic a-bomb. seth unleashes this:
_____'shawn is a pussy. eat at hardee's'
_____hilarious.
_____moving on, i read a pretty good short story last night named 'joelle' by poul anderson. it would be difficult to explain in this medium so i'll just say that you should read it if you get a chance. you probably don't care, so i'll end it here.

_____many thanks to all my loyal reader out there. with a little help from you, we'll get this blog off the ground. after you assist me in getting into the groove, every interesting experience i partake in (or indeed ponder) will become valuable blogging fodder and i can pass my experience directly on to you, the consumer. here's the sort of meanless dribble you will get until that happens:
_____a joke from some little boy at summer league
'knock knock,' said he
'who's there?' the unsuspecting victims replied
'orange,' spake he
'orange who?' the now-suspecting victims begged
a lengthy pause ensued...
'um.... orange.....apple,' came the resolution
_____it should be noted that every time i heard this joke (the conservative estimate puts the number of times at 6) the lengthy pause was a part of the joke. not a pause for timing mind you, a pause to make sure every possible person who could hear him was looking at him.
_____my first reaction was 'i used to tell that joke better'. after that came 'that is a horrible joke'. a short while later my reaction became 'that kid is even cuter because the joke was so bad'. then i went on wondering if he knew the joke was no good. i think he did, but he had different priorities than all of his patient listeners. he really just wanted the attention, same as any of us. the real difference was that he hasn't grown to care whether or not people liked his joke as long as they heard it. as a little kid with seemingly supportive, kind parents everybody loves him. for a lot of kids in upper-middle class america that's how it is. i certainly grew up that way. at some point though, kids start to care whether or not people dig the joke and, as it turns out, not everybody digs your jokes. life gets a lot less fun once that bothers you. anything is a step down from everybody loving you.
_____my final thought on the 'orange apple' experience is that i hope this kid tells his jokes without worrying about pleasing everybody longer than i did. some new material wouldn't hurt either.
_____i was cruising allthingswilliam.com:
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
~ William Stafford
In every real man, a child is hidden that wants to play.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.
~ William Saroyan
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

_____i didn't want to start a hip blog, but here i am. i think i am safe though. i have my ways of unhipping things -- douglas adams quotes, math references, puns, lists that are one item too long. i haven't been writing too much lately; hopefully this will get it going a bit. this sentence doesn't start with 'i'. i'd like to get some songs together for my The Super Intelligent Guy Team solo side project, The Day Old Doughnuts (don't bother remembering that name, it necessarily changes every time the band is mentioned).
_____as it turns out, i don't really have much to say, just a lot of time to say it.
_____douglas adams:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what
the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."