By this time I have already pretty much been up for three days and if not for the usual routine of partying that might coincide with a long mutli-days run the entire experience might have been a bit more fun, instead a cascade of work has fallen into my lap from the long hours amongst the corporate whores attending various medical conferences to the early morning live news reports to the east coast, my chain of consecutive days of posts came to an end, no Joe Dimaggio here or even a Pete Rose, just some who can't deal very well with trying to fall asleep at 8pm, only to wake up at 1:30am, no functional direction only the motivation that I am slowly gravitiating toward some goal that only appears to move further off into the distance. Granted, this exercise here seems to bring that reality closer, very thankful for that, but not this 3am wind storm on the western side of Las Vegas after a day of snow in the upper elevations of the city. It was only a mattter of time before the mild comfortable weather would slowly creep away as the cold artic winds made their presence felt, moving in like an unwanted neighbor, a squatter that after repeated attempts to irratate them to leave only embrace the madness, then begin to turn it around on you until the authorities have to be involved or some sort of aggressive violence. The kind of violence my disturb mind is thriving on at the moment, work will do that to me, why expect any to really care about what they do for a living, it is nothing more than a slight shot of morphine to dull the closing curtain of death, only rising if nothing else to become a nuisance, a chamber orchestra of inept ability bordering on mental retardation.
Some days the odds are stacked against me no matter what kind of positive spin and smile I put on my face, forget it, the dye has been cast long before this day arrived, the only part I played in making it worse was to so willingly give myself up to actions and social pressure I usually tell to fuck off, making things very dark in my mind, half destruction, all pure uncaring nature, which usually takes the work day right down the bar for the remainder of the afternoon if everything falls into place, otherwise, here it comes, a bunch of subnormals who must render in layers of unnecessary input to make the simplist of operations bordering on the complexity of nuclear physics. No much time to hide opinions then, rather just let these people know what is the point of their behavior, to undermind my position, cast me in a bad light as someone who may be incompetent, they may have a point, or just to frivilously pace around throughout the day jotting down notes, spending hours explaining their actions, and finally admitting their decisions might not be the best solution.
Enough, this midnight hour only holds the first cold wind of fall in Las Vegas, a bit late, yet no less uncomfortable, but as these moments for certain things must be endured in order to get a paid education in my line of business, besides the kind of life lessons that are all so plentiful from interacting with strangers, workers, and generally caustic people, whose words take on the form of radioactive waste with a half life of a billion years, while the lights on the Las Vegas Strip grow in size, living in this hotel/condo based city where a portion of the new construction sits empty or unfinished, this once boon town is becoming a ghost town, no matter how many fucking bright lights they put up this city, christmas everyday in this place, so appropriate the holiday season, going green, light up the neon night right out into outer space, even the space station deserves a chance to drowned in the warm glow of an electric centipede frozen in motion, burning through the surface of the earth engulfing itself into the soft sand desert into the hard red rock, dissolving away without character, without voice, and without ever a chance of getting out alive.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Taking Care of Business
It seems that my work and social life have started to bleed into my cognitive desire to post on a daily basis. Another new shock awaiting my already oxygen starved brain slowly pushes me into a realm of potential depression and today would be no diferent as I raced through the backstreets of Las Vegas to once again immerse myself in the entanglement of working within convention business culture. As the Las Vegas Marathon took place just outside the Venetian hotel on the Strip, I could have sworn that they must have detoured the entire pack of runners through the convention halls of the Sands Expo Center, a multipurpose sort of meeting place for annual business gatherings. With no more than a few hours of sleep under my belt, the rising tide of human traffic begins to swell, thousands of people mashing against each other in a Manhattan midtown afternoon pace. I guess the economy has started to rebound for this is the first convention call I have recieved in six months. There is sort of a trade off with this type of work in comparison to the regular broadcast and various other things related to it for a living. What I get to see hear is a culture of people with whom I feel completely disconnected from, if not for the fact I work for myself, not behind some desk, for some corporation, with certain social cultural traits, these are the people who went to college with a goal, who continually set goals, probably don't do much recreational substance abuse, desire to live somewhat contemporary socially accepted life. Guess the convention deals with pharmaceutical products, something I have a fair bit of experience with a different context, however I no longer have the curtain of Oz like proportions that offers me a buffer between the general public during my other work in broadcast production. This form of corporate work entails a fair amount of interaction with the clients themselves who sort of see me and other technical oriented workers as their digital saviours and for the prices these businesses or groups are charged they have a merited point, but unfortunately the profession of audio visual media does not attract those with a great breath of social skills, in fact conflicts can arise quite readily when a technican is dropped into a situation where the bridge between patience and explaining to the guest speaker that he or she has done something to delete their presentation, when infact the technician actually or accidentally deleted the presentation, will set off the most surly and salty old school techs into near blows where the tech bolts out of the room and does not come back. I have witnessed it first hand. There is a real sort of magician's like behavior required as well a large dose of con artist, buying into the whole business meeting in the first place always has the client giddy, the team mentality, which means showing up with clean clothes, washed, combed, and a presentation that does not stray too far from the overall appearance Blockbuster Video salesperson. This homogenized, vanilla state of mind drives me crazy. It is a lie I have trouble complying with if just for the fact that this mind state is how these attendees live, I don't, but the humor of being amongst them like a spy, this party crasher who must be heavily sedated in order not to bust up laughing or run out on a meeting out of pure fear for the insanity he is being exposed to at that moment.
Most convention presenters or others affliated with the media process do not think very much of the technician, we are these guys who at their best remain invisible and fly in superhero like presence in order to solve techinical problems within seconds, though some crowds really try to suck me into the process, the ol round of applause for the guy sitting in corner in the black shirt and pants taking care of our audio visual needs, by that time I have already numbed myself to exposure, all the smiling faces with their morning cups of coffee, excited about the prospect of making the other people buy into advance persuasion tactics in consumerism, the straggling hungover attendee who tip toes to the back of the room sitting in the empty chair next to me who falls asleep within ten minute, casually snoring while everyone turns to me as the culprit, while completely ignore the fact the person is even near me, fixing a hypnotized like facade as the speaker, coughs then returns to the powerpoint slides on the screen.
Today at lunch, the entire lunch pavillion at the Venetian had been overrun by conventioneers gathered in small regional packs from whatever part of the country or world they happen to reside, just like high school, but a high school of advance placement teenagers who really believe in study, hard work, and following the rules will lead to success, as I stand in line with my Metallica shirt on, I am a damn 40 year old teenager, who cannot stand conformity, but here I am anyway neck deep in a sea of it, if for nothing else to finally get some this event down on virtual paper. My mood is fairly dark for a lack of sleep and the fact that no matter what type of corporate event my actual role in all this tends to lag in any sort of concrete definition. Usually, I end up walking right into an audio visual mindfield, fill with co-workers who are only there to get a check, no desire and all the ability to remain invisible for an entire workday leaving me with an overloaded share of responsibility I do not necessarily want, which always causes a lot of friction within my mind because I hate to have my reputation as a ass kicker put in jeopardy when a work situation disaster starts to form on the horizon, no matter how pissed off I get, the job gets done, no matter how violated my ego feels or my integrity, this film, filth of how business is really done in this world covers my skin like a living organism unwilling to leave its host.
All my decisions in life have led me to this moment on this day, where I will eat shit and accept it because, no one else will pay me today or as a favor for some friend in the business, yet sometimes as a reminder of what waits for me if I ever slacken my current direction with my regular gigs. These techs make good money and some of them great money when the economy had more steam, so it is not like I could not make a living in this field, but the phony cheerleading garbage of pep rallying a company to sacrifice and outperform like some high school play really makes my mind take offense to the entire establishment of annual business meetings in the first place. Still, I will go into work tomorrow at 4am, making about half of what I usually make in a normal work day, maintaining a small amount of bitterness, yet put on my best face, get down to work and contribute no matter how goofy and utterly ridiculous the speaker sessions and my co-workers turn out. There will be moments of a slow dissolve sitting behind audio mix console waiting for presenters to speak, trapped like an animal acknowledging its own death, going limp, with anymore resistance, reduced to corporate cheddar to be spread upon their economic plans for the upcoming year, but my new outlet shall be my redemption, it already is with this piece. Off I go to huddle all the sheep together for the speech to end all speeches, which will motivate, uplift, and transform all in the matter of two hours, with all the passion and madness of someone with rabies and meth addiction, this is something I have to witness.
Most convention presenters or others affliated with the media process do not think very much of the technician, we are these guys who at their best remain invisible and fly in superhero like presence in order to solve techinical problems within seconds, though some crowds really try to suck me into the process, the ol round of applause for the guy sitting in corner in the black shirt and pants taking care of our audio visual needs, by that time I have already numbed myself to exposure, all the smiling faces with their morning cups of coffee, excited about the prospect of making the other people buy into advance persuasion tactics in consumerism, the straggling hungover attendee who tip toes to the back of the room sitting in the empty chair next to me who falls asleep within ten minute, casually snoring while everyone turns to me as the culprit, while completely ignore the fact the person is even near me, fixing a hypnotized like facade as the speaker, coughs then returns to the powerpoint slides on the screen.
Today at lunch, the entire lunch pavillion at the Venetian had been overrun by conventioneers gathered in small regional packs from whatever part of the country or world they happen to reside, just like high school, but a high school of advance placement teenagers who really believe in study, hard work, and following the rules will lead to success, as I stand in line with my Metallica shirt on, I am a damn 40 year old teenager, who cannot stand conformity, but here I am anyway neck deep in a sea of it, if for nothing else to finally get some this event down on virtual paper. My mood is fairly dark for a lack of sleep and the fact that no matter what type of corporate event my actual role in all this tends to lag in any sort of concrete definition. Usually, I end up walking right into an audio visual mindfield, fill with co-workers who are only there to get a check, no desire and all the ability to remain invisible for an entire workday leaving me with an overloaded share of responsibility I do not necessarily want, which always causes a lot of friction within my mind because I hate to have my reputation as a ass kicker put in jeopardy when a work situation disaster starts to form on the horizon, no matter how pissed off I get, the job gets done, no matter how violated my ego feels or my integrity, this film, filth of how business is really done in this world covers my skin like a living organism unwilling to leave its host.
All my decisions in life have led me to this moment on this day, where I will eat shit and accept it because, no one else will pay me today or as a favor for some friend in the business, yet sometimes as a reminder of what waits for me if I ever slacken my current direction with my regular gigs. These techs make good money and some of them great money when the economy had more steam, so it is not like I could not make a living in this field, but the phony cheerleading garbage of pep rallying a company to sacrifice and outperform like some high school play really makes my mind take offense to the entire establishment of annual business meetings in the first place. Still, I will go into work tomorrow at 4am, making about half of what I usually make in a normal work day, maintaining a small amount of bitterness, yet put on my best face, get down to work and contribute no matter how goofy and utterly ridiculous the speaker sessions and my co-workers turn out. There will be moments of a slow dissolve sitting behind audio mix console waiting for presenters to speak, trapped like an animal acknowledging its own death, going limp, with anymore resistance, reduced to corporate cheddar to be spread upon their economic plans for the upcoming year, but my new outlet shall be my redemption, it already is with this piece. Off I go to huddle all the sheep together for the speech to end all speeches, which will motivate, uplift, and transform all in the matter of two hours, with all the passion and madness of someone with rabies and meth addiction, this is something I have to witness.
The Politics of Violence
Just the presence of Hulk Hogan alone should have been fair enough warning in the direction of tonight's mixed martial art event would be heading. An almost carnival like celebration of the indoctrination of the sports most lauded personalities though a fighter with very rudimentary skills. However, any lack of talent could not stop the already viral campaign introduced years ago for this particular fighter. Watching him fight tonight with an already exhuasted and fatigued looks halfway through the match sort of I felt began to deligitimize a sport that has been so prideful on a collection of some of the most well train athletes in the world. Having witness some of the training first hand that many of the elite fighters go through in order to maintain their high level of success would seem to have been developed from a mixture military, tribal, and 70's Eastern Bloc training methods, I found the fact that this fighter seemed to appear as a mockery of what these real warriors, who pushed themselves much harder than this Internet sensation could ever fathom trying.
But as the audience of the MMA fighting begins to expand, the expectations as well as the revelant nature of the fighters to the audience must contain a sort of Hollywood like appeal, almost comicbook WWE style, where dramatics outweight, techincal skills, where the shaking of fists at an opponet demanding he step in closer, trumps, a well designed ground game of submissions and exposing weaknesses in the others fighting style. The first thing that got me thinking about the overt corporate nature of this sport which beginning to feel more like an advertising vehicle than proving ground for sportsmen who sacrifice physically and mentally to become obsidian rock was the Dave and Buster's adveristing sign in the middle of the cage where the two fighters sqaured off, usually the main central advertiser will be a major corporation with plenty of national exposure, but an amusement arcade, an adult Chuck E Cheese, did not appear to me to find in with all the other adrenaline products that have been the staple of this sport since its inception. My experience alone in growing with the sports has gone from energy drinks to now MMA video games, clothing labels that have multiplied exponentially, at the beginning their was Tapout and now it seems almost any fighter with a high visibility in the sport has their own line of clothing.
I just wonder if all this, all the media exposure, the corporate sponsers, and television shows have taken away from some of the raw elements that comprise the foundation of MMA. I doubt any of the fighters will have a problem with all the financial influx heading into the sport on a seemly daily basis. MMA is teetering on mainstream success and will no doubt become more popular as the audience gains more access either going to or watching the fights on television. The immidiate impact of seeing an opponet being knocked straight to the ground can be really intense, in person even shocking, watching a fighter have a seizure or break a foot in wrong direction or lay their unconscious for minutes without recollection of the fight even starting.
All these are no doubt brutal, but accepted by the combatants as part of the territory that comes with being an MMA fighter, most of these guys come out of matches with bruises, deep cuts, and once in a while dislocated limbs. Yet the fighters are not detered and look forward to stepping into the cage to show off their will power, discipline, and multi fighting styles. Granted some of these fighters my go out and start swinging till one falls, but when two really great fighters come together something more like a chess match breaks out, one of looking ahead of how one fighter responses to various engagements, attacks, or defensive strategies.
I think for some of the newer people to the sport this foundation like element of appreciating those above traits gets overlooked by the quick knockout, devestating punch, or bloodbath filled fight where the two fighters are painted in each others blood. It is so much easy wheel in some sports athelets, B grade film stars, or other fighters of note to generate more interest from the crowd at home, the crowd in the audience is usually filled with people who have a strong passion for the sport of MMA, who look beyond all the commerical spots playing inside the venue and who might be up and coming fighters themselves but usually just fans with intense interest that love a great struggle between two combatants who take pride in maximizing their talents in the gym, then using them in the octogon with confidence of a person who has been working at this game for a decade.
The bandwagon is growing and with it will be the departments in charge of making the fan experience larger, better, and more in depth. During most of the MMA shows I work on, we have a fan experience contestant winner, usually the winner and a few friends who get a tour of all the facilities, fighters rooms, the cage, some of the on air talent, fighters, and maybe even the boss of the whole operation who is probably one of the most accessable people in the entire organization, his passion alone for MMA has taken this product from the backyard casinos to an international success, a true global sport now, the contest winners seemed so blown away to actually get to see behind Oz's curtain and now it is not a single man pulling on levels, blowing whistles, and talking into voiceboxes to alter his voice, no, this a collection of top professionals who come together from so many different departments, from the television side, the business side, the commerical side, and from the operations side. Time after time creating a product that these fans stand in disbelief as they people like myself running at full speed for 15 hrs straight making sure the product is quality and their own experience is maximized.
This show is part rock n roll, part nightclub, part informercial, and all intensity when the fights are good. So what am I here, a product or an extension of all these fighters who have no fear that many people would feel stepping inside that cage with only the other fighter across the way. Knowing that you are going to have to beat the shit out this person, out manuever him, or set him up to be submitted, a conscious desire to spill his blood, break an arm, or put him to sleep. For many, alcohol and drugs or maybe a bad relationship might well up an instinct of punishment, yet to be able to go fight someone while maintaining poise, emotion, and awareness seems for someone like me who runs on emotion and adrenline, damn right impossible to perform, the discipline is mindblowing, whether the fighter wins or loses, just getting inside their with all these judgemental eyes and minds, takes guts but it also a strong mind, a mind that can get past all the egotism of the spotlight that MMA provides. After watching over ten solid years of MMA without really following it, I can still recognize the breath, the layers that make this sport what it has become, even though I find of the people they have let fight in MMA recently a bit more motivated toward a larger audience, there are still those fights between up and comers that really pump up the purists and even myself, there is great beauty and grace in movement as two fighters counter, strike, defend, analyize, react, and engage with a sense of pure well honed instinct that alone captures my interest, enough to write about at it.
This battle of commerical versus purity of sport rages on in all types of atheltics MMA is not alone but probably one of the newsest sports to enjoy such a large amount of success in a very short time, not to say that this sport has plateaued, but what concerns me about the future of MMA is, will decisions become more dictated by the actions of the potential for revenue or the strong hearts of the fighters and the fight fans, I hope the latter, cause the fans are rabid for this sport who travel from all over the world to be part of this unique experience, where two people
can test their mettle while surrounded by a gluttony of advertising that makes NASCAR jealous, yet someone has to pay the bills, even mine and this sport has being doing that for quite a while, still how this sport has lent itself to the likes of a washed up Hulk Hogan for whatever new television vehicle he is selling is concerning or any other B list actor with a comedy series or movie of the week to push does not feel like proper direction. Visibilty and with it comes the masses who want the most obvious waterdown, base, vile, and hyped up show they can find, forget about Ju Jitsu skills, just knock the shit out of the guy and quit rolling around on the ground, I could do that, get in that octogon, a couple of beers, then punch some fool senseless, sure it is that easy. I laugh at people I have met who ask me if MMA is real, due to the nature of WWE, people have bought into making MMA into a scripted like show where everything is planed. I know the broken bones, the swollen faces, and lacerated cuts that look like a pair of lips cannot be faked. These fighters get the crap beat out of them everyday just for practice, but I think the average person cannot understand, all the training, sacrifice, and spirituality those fighter contain, their relationship with MMA is unbreakable. Will all the new larger, bigger ads, television shows, and major city events, put MMA into the realm of all the other main sports, who knows, but my main concern is sacrificing the soul of MMA for a larger audience, a soul that meshed together all sorts of fighting techniques by people who live for the thrill to prove their worth, their ability, and desire to win in a cage, where once that door is closed, offers only one way out, victory.
But as the audience of the MMA fighting begins to expand, the expectations as well as the revelant nature of the fighters to the audience must contain a sort of Hollywood like appeal, almost comicbook WWE style, where dramatics outweight, techincal skills, where the shaking of fists at an opponet demanding he step in closer, trumps, a well designed ground game of submissions and exposing weaknesses in the others fighting style. The first thing that got me thinking about the overt corporate nature of this sport which beginning to feel more like an advertising vehicle than proving ground for sportsmen who sacrifice physically and mentally to become obsidian rock was the Dave and Buster's adveristing sign in the middle of the cage where the two fighters sqaured off, usually the main central advertiser will be a major corporation with plenty of national exposure, but an amusement arcade, an adult Chuck E Cheese, did not appear to me to find in with all the other adrenaline products that have been the staple of this sport since its inception. My experience alone in growing with the sports has gone from energy drinks to now MMA video games, clothing labels that have multiplied exponentially, at the beginning their was Tapout and now it seems almost any fighter with a high visibility in the sport has their own line of clothing.
I just wonder if all this, all the media exposure, the corporate sponsers, and television shows have taken away from some of the raw elements that comprise the foundation of MMA. I doubt any of the fighters will have a problem with all the financial influx heading into the sport on a seemly daily basis. MMA is teetering on mainstream success and will no doubt become more popular as the audience gains more access either going to or watching the fights on television. The immidiate impact of seeing an opponet being knocked straight to the ground can be really intense, in person even shocking, watching a fighter have a seizure or break a foot in wrong direction or lay their unconscious for minutes without recollection of the fight even starting.
All these are no doubt brutal, but accepted by the combatants as part of the territory that comes with being an MMA fighter, most of these guys come out of matches with bruises, deep cuts, and once in a while dislocated limbs. Yet the fighters are not detered and look forward to stepping into the cage to show off their will power, discipline, and multi fighting styles. Granted some of these fighters my go out and start swinging till one falls, but when two really great fighters come together something more like a chess match breaks out, one of looking ahead of how one fighter responses to various engagements, attacks, or defensive strategies.
I think for some of the newer people to the sport this foundation like element of appreciating those above traits gets overlooked by the quick knockout, devestating punch, or bloodbath filled fight where the two fighters are painted in each others blood. It is so much easy wheel in some sports athelets, B grade film stars, or other fighters of note to generate more interest from the crowd at home, the crowd in the audience is usually filled with people who have a strong passion for the sport of MMA, who look beyond all the commerical spots playing inside the venue and who might be up and coming fighters themselves but usually just fans with intense interest that love a great struggle between two combatants who take pride in maximizing their talents in the gym, then using them in the octogon with confidence of a person who has been working at this game for a decade.
The bandwagon is growing and with it will be the departments in charge of making the fan experience larger, better, and more in depth. During most of the MMA shows I work on, we have a fan experience contestant winner, usually the winner and a few friends who get a tour of all the facilities, fighters rooms, the cage, some of the on air talent, fighters, and maybe even the boss of the whole operation who is probably one of the most accessable people in the entire organization, his passion alone for MMA has taken this product from the backyard casinos to an international success, a true global sport now, the contest winners seemed so blown away to actually get to see behind Oz's curtain and now it is not a single man pulling on levels, blowing whistles, and talking into voiceboxes to alter his voice, no, this a collection of top professionals who come together from so many different departments, from the television side, the business side, the commerical side, and from the operations side. Time after time creating a product that these fans stand in disbelief as they people like myself running at full speed for 15 hrs straight making sure the product is quality and their own experience is maximized.
This show is part rock n roll, part nightclub, part informercial, and all intensity when the fights are good. So what am I here, a product or an extension of all these fighters who have no fear that many people would feel stepping inside that cage with only the other fighter across the way. Knowing that you are going to have to beat the shit out this person, out manuever him, or set him up to be submitted, a conscious desire to spill his blood, break an arm, or put him to sleep. For many, alcohol and drugs or maybe a bad relationship might well up an instinct of punishment, yet to be able to go fight someone while maintaining poise, emotion, and awareness seems for someone like me who runs on emotion and adrenline, damn right impossible to perform, the discipline is mindblowing, whether the fighter wins or loses, just getting inside their with all these judgemental eyes and minds, takes guts but it also a strong mind, a mind that can get past all the egotism of the spotlight that MMA provides. After watching over ten solid years of MMA without really following it, I can still recognize the breath, the layers that make this sport what it has become, even though I find of the people they have let fight in MMA recently a bit more motivated toward a larger audience, there are still those fights between up and comers that really pump up the purists and even myself, there is great beauty and grace in movement as two fighters counter, strike, defend, analyize, react, and engage with a sense of pure well honed instinct that alone captures my interest, enough to write about at it.
This battle of commerical versus purity of sport rages on in all types of atheltics MMA is not alone but probably one of the newsest sports to enjoy such a large amount of success in a very short time, not to say that this sport has plateaued, but what concerns me about the future of MMA is, will decisions become more dictated by the actions of the potential for revenue or the strong hearts of the fighters and the fight fans, I hope the latter, cause the fans are rabid for this sport who travel from all over the world to be part of this unique experience, where two people
can test their mettle while surrounded by a gluttony of advertising that makes NASCAR jealous, yet someone has to pay the bills, even mine and this sport has being doing that for quite a while, still how this sport has lent itself to the likes of a washed up Hulk Hogan for whatever new television vehicle he is selling is concerning or any other B list actor with a comedy series or movie of the week to push does not feel like proper direction. Visibilty and with it comes the masses who want the most obvious waterdown, base, vile, and hyped up show they can find, forget about Ju Jitsu skills, just knock the shit out of the guy and quit rolling around on the ground, I could do that, get in that octogon, a couple of beers, then punch some fool senseless, sure it is that easy. I laugh at people I have met who ask me if MMA is real, due to the nature of WWE, people have bought into making MMA into a scripted like show where everything is planed. I know the broken bones, the swollen faces, and lacerated cuts that look like a pair of lips cannot be faked. These fighters get the crap beat out of them everyday just for practice, but I think the average person cannot understand, all the training, sacrifice, and spirituality those fighter contain, their relationship with MMA is unbreakable. Will all the new larger, bigger ads, television shows, and major city events, put MMA into the realm of all the other main sports, who knows, but my main concern is sacrificing the soul of MMA for a larger audience, a soul that meshed together all sorts of fighting techniques by people who live for the thrill to prove their worth, their ability, and desire to win in a cage, where once that door is closed, offers only one way out, victory.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
How Soon is Now?
Well, thought I would get around to part two of dancing days, but totally loaded on narcotic beyond the point of assisting anyone. a mere seven hours ago did I know that Morrisey would be rolling his self expression facade into town. Defined by his Stalineque like photo plastered against the background stage, did the masses want to hear the Smiths, sure and he delivered of course while maintaining his presence with all the teenagers and wanna be fourty something teenagers all looking to holding an audience with Morrisey as I got more wasted by the second. Editing is gonna be fun, all of Morrisey's love lost forribben existence came to life within a few songs. The songs of the show may have been mostly his own material but whenever a Smiths song came alive the entire venue went sideways., which leaves me in a limbo of how to move on from this situation, a mere mortal. I did not expect to do anything more than have a few beers tonight but nonetheless the rest of the report must ensue, fighting like a viper, a small organization, either way this greek tradgey presented itself in the most pure form while Morrissey tucked brief little notes from addicted fans bent on holding an audience with the man no matter how brief, so at this point is quite late and would rather cut this short than edit this dialouge for another 3 hours. I did not realize how much of a commitment this blog would be and how it might affect my personal party life. Most everyone has gone to bed, except for me and the greek like sorrow my story might bring, no sorrow tonight, just exposure, off to bed, before the words make no sense at all, have to cut it short, thx
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Dancing Days are Gone Again Part 1
Well, this is becoming more of a habit day by day, must file a report no matter how battered, sleep deprived and emotionally drained I might be, so here we go. The dance music Wed. night at a small club called Body English at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas will be closing its doors next week in order to go into a cocoon like state to reemerge has a more prolific butterfly of a nightclub to coincide with all the new renovations on the hotel property. So this long standing club music night shall be going dormant the following next week leaving a large chasm in an already dance music (techno, house, and trance) deprived city. This fact gave me more motivation than usual to go and at least attempt to absorb the last little bit of this small paradise island before it dissapears from site forever. I have found over the past couple of years; one of the main reasons for people to come to this night was for the hour of free drinks offered right as the doors open early in the evening. It usually only takes one time of participating in the free drink bonanza to remedy oneself from ever doing it again, as the entire idea of the free drinks its self can be a little misleading.
Once upon walking into the club, the first thing you would notice is now empty the place is except for a small little bar located at the back of the club, seems only one of the three bars in the place serves the free drinks during this time, so very quickly a small crowd begins to form around this ten by twenty bar, aggressively pushing and shoving their way to the front of the line order to get some of the free drink fiasco. Once at the front of the line, you shall discover that there are only three alternatives in the free drink dept., one is some low grade champange, the kind you might find the homeless drinking in a brown bag or your grandparents serving up during the holiday season, two a concotion of a drink resembling a vodka and cranberry with a vodka supposedly based on a fairly well known brand of vodka which after about eight of them in ten minutes can get you incredibly buzzed, and the third drink might have been a burbon and coke sort of mixture, never really went for anything but the vodka cran combo, just because it felt like the safest and least hangover prone drink of the bunch.
With this established, now comes the rub, which means why these drinks are not actually free, after battling with the other drunks, prom queen cuties, and bartenders' friends for some space at the front of the bar, you get a rather fast lesson from one of the female bartenders on how to approach the free drink situation, which is order at least four drinks at a time, because the directional flow of people in the tide makes it difficult at times to get back to the beach head of the bar especially with only an hour to drink, within the first half hour there are anywhere near three hundred people fighting the attention of three, maybe four bartenders, so how does one get those bartenders attention. Well, the easiest approach I have found is to hand them a ten or twenty dollar bill the first time I go up for a set of drinks, more than not I would go to the club by myself, but occasionally someone was naive enough to attempt to endure this classic case of binge drinking that would make any college age student run for cover. Yet after handing over that ten or twenty, the pipeline of free drinks became virtually unlimited; there was no sort of cutoff point to the amount they could serve, just the hour time limit itself, which would lead to massive accumulation of vodka cranberries right at the last minutes of the hour where an enormous scramble for any amount of free drinks erupted into a mosh pit day traders floor like environment, where arms, bodies, and loud voices all came together in a symphony of chaos looking to satisfy their alcohol fix one last time before the prices returned to their normal over inflated levels that could find the same free orders now costing in the range of at least fifty to seventy five dollars a round, which adds up pretty damn fast if you happen to be the guy or sucker, whoever you want to call him that has to run point on the drink patrol for the legions of attractive women in tow at the nightclub, the cost of attaining ornaments, during this holiday season seems all so appropriate, but if the drinks run out, amongst all sorts of other illegal substances, then there go the ornaments as well, but that is an entirely another subject for another day.
So I have sucessfully acquired my first eight drinks, those twenty dollar bills come in handy, now all that is left is to drink them all down as fast as possible in order to get eight more before the clock strikes midnight. The drinks are fairly watered down, mostly ice and juice, but if you know how bartenders work, remember they are tip motivated, the bigger the tip, the better the drink, this is how they recall your face, out of all the thousands of people they deal with in a night and knowing some bartenders myself, customers tend not to tip very much due to the fact that the drinks at least in Las Vegas but in most high end nightclubs are very expensive, for what one beer costs at a club you could buy a six pack or even a twelve pack of some domestic rot gut, yet the point here is if you tip them well, you shall always get preferrential treatment from the maddening crowd that surrounds on all sides, VIP like status, quick service, and loaded up drinks that will make you cringe after the first taste due to the strong alcohol content.
This is the fast track to complete devastation and if not checked can lead to a very early night in the bathroom puking or stumbling around the nightclub like some asylum escapee, but of course after a few weeks amongst the other binge drinkers a small nesting develops where all the familiar faces congregate for the fraternity like contests of witnessing who can down the most drinks in the allotted hour of time. This sort of novelty has a duration of at the most maybe three weeks, one or two will do for most, I personally have down sixteen in an hour, for what reason I can not quite recall, but there were others who had no problem outdoing my feat with great zeal and a rare ability to hold their liquor, yet to endure another two hours before the guest DJ would arrive became more of a battle for survival than a night out on the town. There are not too many places in the club patrons can sit down without paying for the priviledge to do so, most of the nightclubs follow this policy, otherwise the entire place would be filled with passed out partiers, throwing up in corners and attempting to have sex in most obvious of places, especially the dancefloor.
One week was enough for me, the sheer fact of staying at this particular nightclub from 10:30pm to 3 or 4am completely wasted on booze serves as more torture than pleasure, sure you will encounter all sorts of people and situations throughout the night, not all of them uncomfortable and possibly hookup with a woman, who may or may not have also participated in the booze fest free for all where the two of you can go straight high school Tijuana club night on the dancefloor making out in front of everyone without a care in the world, where that might lead is probably a strong motivator for this legion of lushes to show up for the free drinks in the first place. The clock is ticking and the hive is abuzz with conversations, pick up lines, and demands for attention from the bartenders, yet soon enough the booze is cut off and just like the end of the trading day, the floor clears while the bartenders clean up the residue of the feeding frenzy while casually gathering their wits for the long hual of questions from bombed out tourists who cannot fathom why the drinks are no longer free at 2am in the morning amongst all the other propositions the primarily female bartender staff endure throughout the night. It is no secret or shock that these ladies must dress like exotic dancers, give off allure, and in the end offer service to even the most base and grossly obvious perverts who seek some private time and are as persistent as a crack junky looking to score, no street too dangerous, no comment too inappropriate.
Tonight though, I head into the nightclub around 1230am that is about the time the headlining DJ goes on, sometimes 1am, but this saves me time hanging around the early crowd that tends to consist of all the free wheeling drinkers from hour number one, the music tends to be more mainstream and behavior a bit more gross like shameful sexual orgy of pig farmers lathered in baby oil and rubbing alcohol, attacking each other with the zest of some drug possessed speed freak in leather chaps. The entire scene evokes memories of what it might have been during the time of Caligulia, though after witnessing some of the dancefloor activities on occasion, it might have made the roman hedonist go fetal. Amongst the crowd of zanies on the dancefloor is a group of people I term the Asian mafia, they are a group numbering on any given week from ten to twenty and they are always twisted on some sort of chemicals, throwing and swinging their women around on the dancefloor in some sort of primative ritualistic cult like behavior in attempt to channel some sort of ephinany like enlightenment. Most of the men have to be at least fifty and myself being nearly fourty feel like the old man in the crowd, but thankfully these guys in their dark shades have no problem bopping around on the dancefloor for hours at a time without pause as if programmed by the flow of the music, some sort of subliminal carrier signal has been supplanted within the music itself.
I like to take up residence in their area, just for the ebbing wave of relentless energy that seems to slowly possess me as the music gets better throughout the night. The plume of naroctic effluvient takes position around my senses and spirit, there is no one in this club who week in and week out look more fucked up than this clandalstine cadre of drug induced warriors, awaiting the ceremonial shaman to approach the musical alter of sacrifice where brain cells shall be lifted over heads and then cast into the fire of Parkinson's like behavior into the next couple of decades. So the mafia holds down their side of the dancefloor in a sort of impromptu role as nightclub diplomat to all the first time tourists who might be getting their initial taste of real decadent behavior, due in fact to the techno/house music, which tends to be louder, faster, and when hallucinating more sensorial and without going into another tangent of my own experience, let me just say that people begin to hear, see, and feel things that they might dismiss during their conscious hours of sobriety, but when existing in more of a dream state on the dancefloor where experience of visual, aurual, and emotional states may take on a more surrealistic nature things can come at you very fast, it will make sense at the time and for someone who is new to the experience can find it a bit rough on the sanity, almost like an intense science fiction stoner film, where any sort of reference point with reality has long gone by the wayside. I have seen it happen, losing the plot is a term people use, complete disassociation, an extended vacation that some never want to end, no stress, just blissful release of chemicals made within one's own body on command from the brain, amongst people who share in this same belief of the never ending high, a fool hearty pipe dream but for those four or five hours, as a friend of mine would say, bye bye.
The headline DJ is beginning to gather himself, he has an assistant who is in the middle of setting up this mini recording studio up on the DJ booth, beginning with an array of cables, modules, and other computer based equipment, one cannot be sure whether he is going to play music or maybe attempt to remotely launch a space shuttle from somewhere in Florida. This whole process of plugging in wires, adjusting buttons, and booting up laptop computers takes nearly a half an hour, while the DJ himself sits off to the side somewhere patiently drinking a cocktail while entertaining a myriad of people like the promoter and various hanger ons who take worship complex to entirely another level, so while this like colony of worker bees buzzes about the DJ, I sort of begin to contemplate how much longer I will stay, looks like the headliner will only play two hours, three is much better, yet everyone is different and the crowd has some input on how long a DJ will play, if they responsed well early to some of the slightly motivational tracks, which get the party started so to speak this will cue the DJ to focus more into developing the emotional flow of the night via the music, a psychological symphony or just mere sonic manipulation, regardless a more clued up crowd, meaning a dancefloor that follows dance music to the point where they know many of the tracks or at least know the flow of the DJ playing or lastly just love to dance like someone with possessed with the spirits of James Brown and Iggy Pop can take the night to another level like going from Defcon 5 to Defcon 2 and when Defcon 1 is reached make sure you place your sanity somewhere familiar, cause on that occasion when the music, clubbers, DJ, and dancefloor hit Defcon 1 time and space start to bend, hours can turn into minutes and before you know it the lights are on, it's six am with presence of a new day making its way over the eastern horizon.
The vibe as it is called, is something that develops in those who listen to dance music, a few just have a natural gravitation toward the music, fits them, no learning curve and it is not all just about the drugs, for some sure, but I know quite a few people who will just drink a soda or water throughout the night, but be dancing around as if hit with taser and tranquilizer gun simulatenously once the music picks up steam. Dance music DJ's, at least the great ones, start off with a real midlevel tempo, something to get the bodies moving, yet not some mind altering deep heavy club music that get people speaking in tongues while journeying through out of body experiences before 2am and having witnessed nights like that throughout the years, just have the medivacs, stretchers, and medics on standby, the casualities will pile up, an epidemic of hopped up cretins will take things too far if left unchecked, some shall attempt to leap out into unfamiliar boundaries they have yet to understand then get dragged into the undertoe when the waves of chemicals released from the brain get stronger and more immidiate sending them into shock, psychological shock, a clean break from reality, it can get intense when one's body starts running the show without the rational mind being allowed any input, images appear, thoughts germinate, mortal thoughts, paralysis, orgasmic like waves drowned everything else out and without the proper training in how to manuever throughout all these various states during this freak out, things can get messy. The combonation of club music, drugs, and a group of like minded people who are all participating in developing this state, this possession, or ritualistic attempt at enlightenment will get right on top of the novice who sees all this as one big barrel of fun, like doing beer bongs at high school parties. But it is not and I have seen the zombies, the paralyzed, and the OD'd fall at times right into my arms, dehydrated, ingesting narcotics they truly do not understand or even recognize, just eat the damn thing, says one friend to another, you'll love it, as they wake up at the hospital, full of IV's and stomach pumps, if they are lucky, others wake up sexually assualted, robbed, or braindead.
This is the darkside of recreational substance abuse and from someone who has spent a quarter of a century participating in such adventures, it is not always fun. Luckily, tonight the only people who seem to be in the war zone is the Asian mafia and if you took a sample of any their blood, sweat, or hair folics, I have no doubt you would instantenously start to hallucinate. Not really, much of a crowd tonight, they are trying and the DJ notices, attempts to jump start the collective shift to the next gear, but this crowd does not understand this DJ who is playing club tracks that drift more toward the heavier partiers that have internalized this housetechnoprogressive sound to the point that when the music is heard, their bodies begin to chemically react at a cellular level, you can put me in that catagory, great dance music is like a fix, an adrenline rush, a connective emotive state of existence which when place one on top of another become like building blocks ending up in a constructive architecture of happiness, other parts of the brain take over, start calling shots, cause how else can people aerobically maintain five or more hours of physical stamina, dancefloor pilates, some might say drugs are involved to maintain that energy level, but others just are carried away by the music. Not as much tonight though, a great bunch of sounds as I take a break to talk to a few friends about the Wed. night weekly becoming a thing of the past, again, as so many nights, over so many years, a place to gather in a society bent on moving at the speed of light and beyond, this stopover, this sanctuary is one of the few places where club music fans can interact with like minded people, but even more important where people who have not really experienced this scene, sound, and crowd, can have an opportunity to explore it without judgement, with encouragement from the regulars, I have watched people, unfamiliar with the club music scene, stand around, taking it in, sort of weirded out by the group of raver kids spinning their lights in fluid like movements, or the throngs of dancefloor junkies going at the dancing as if it was their last night on earth, as well as the large groups of patrons from aboard where dance club culture is well connected with the mainstream, throw in the mafia and a few other crazies, and what transpires is this circus on the edge of a riot at all times and when that right dance track at the right moment is played, total insanity will ensue, something described by Dante from his book the Inferno, the atomsphere seems unreal that all these people are letting go, feel secure with themselves, and are enjoying what life has given them, these things themselves will hook a few new people as I watch them go from ridiculing the whole scene amongst their friends to full on club mayhem arm in arm with a bunch of other loonies smiling their ass off when the music gets heavy, deep, and primitive. Dancing is primitive in its nature, tribal, a community of people coming together part spiritual, part celebratory, and all encompassing love in understanding how music connects us all.
I'm going to cut it here, all the other fun stuff happens after the club closes, work starts in five hours and I did not get home till 9am yesterday, so some spatchka, then Part 2, no editing on this one tonight, so if it is a bit sorted, just realize life inside the metropolis does not always provide time to edit ones life. See Ya
Once upon walking into the club, the first thing you would notice is now empty the place is except for a small little bar located at the back of the club, seems only one of the three bars in the place serves the free drinks during this time, so very quickly a small crowd begins to form around this ten by twenty bar, aggressively pushing and shoving their way to the front of the line order to get some of the free drink fiasco. Once at the front of the line, you shall discover that there are only three alternatives in the free drink dept., one is some low grade champange, the kind you might find the homeless drinking in a brown bag or your grandparents serving up during the holiday season, two a concotion of a drink resembling a vodka and cranberry with a vodka supposedly based on a fairly well known brand of vodka which after about eight of them in ten minutes can get you incredibly buzzed, and the third drink might have been a burbon and coke sort of mixture, never really went for anything but the vodka cran combo, just because it felt like the safest and least hangover prone drink of the bunch.
With this established, now comes the rub, which means why these drinks are not actually free, after battling with the other drunks, prom queen cuties, and bartenders' friends for some space at the front of the bar, you get a rather fast lesson from one of the female bartenders on how to approach the free drink situation, which is order at least four drinks at a time, because the directional flow of people in the tide makes it difficult at times to get back to the beach head of the bar especially with only an hour to drink, within the first half hour there are anywhere near three hundred people fighting the attention of three, maybe four bartenders, so how does one get those bartenders attention. Well, the easiest approach I have found is to hand them a ten or twenty dollar bill the first time I go up for a set of drinks, more than not I would go to the club by myself, but occasionally someone was naive enough to attempt to endure this classic case of binge drinking that would make any college age student run for cover. Yet after handing over that ten or twenty, the pipeline of free drinks became virtually unlimited; there was no sort of cutoff point to the amount they could serve, just the hour time limit itself, which would lead to massive accumulation of vodka cranberries right at the last minutes of the hour where an enormous scramble for any amount of free drinks erupted into a mosh pit day traders floor like environment, where arms, bodies, and loud voices all came together in a symphony of chaos looking to satisfy their alcohol fix one last time before the prices returned to their normal over inflated levels that could find the same free orders now costing in the range of at least fifty to seventy five dollars a round, which adds up pretty damn fast if you happen to be the guy or sucker, whoever you want to call him that has to run point on the drink patrol for the legions of attractive women in tow at the nightclub, the cost of attaining ornaments, during this holiday season seems all so appropriate, but if the drinks run out, amongst all sorts of other illegal substances, then there go the ornaments as well, but that is an entirely another subject for another day.
So I have sucessfully acquired my first eight drinks, those twenty dollar bills come in handy, now all that is left is to drink them all down as fast as possible in order to get eight more before the clock strikes midnight. The drinks are fairly watered down, mostly ice and juice, but if you know how bartenders work, remember they are tip motivated, the bigger the tip, the better the drink, this is how they recall your face, out of all the thousands of people they deal with in a night and knowing some bartenders myself, customers tend not to tip very much due to the fact that the drinks at least in Las Vegas but in most high end nightclubs are very expensive, for what one beer costs at a club you could buy a six pack or even a twelve pack of some domestic rot gut, yet the point here is if you tip them well, you shall always get preferrential treatment from the maddening crowd that surrounds on all sides, VIP like status, quick service, and loaded up drinks that will make you cringe after the first taste due to the strong alcohol content.
This is the fast track to complete devastation and if not checked can lead to a very early night in the bathroom puking or stumbling around the nightclub like some asylum escapee, but of course after a few weeks amongst the other binge drinkers a small nesting develops where all the familiar faces congregate for the fraternity like contests of witnessing who can down the most drinks in the allotted hour of time. This sort of novelty has a duration of at the most maybe three weeks, one or two will do for most, I personally have down sixteen in an hour, for what reason I can not quite recall, but there were others who had no problem outdoing my feat with great zeal and a rare ability to hold their liquor, yet to endure another two hours before the guest DJ would arrive became more of a battle for survival than a night out on the town. There are not too many places in the club patrons can sit down without paying for the priviledge to do so, most of the nightclubs follow this policy, otherwise the entire place would be filled with passed out partiers, throwing up in corners and attempting to have sex in most obvious of places, especially the dancefloor.
One week was enough for me, the sheer fact of staying at this particular nightclub from 10:30pm to 3 or 4am completely wasted on booze serves as more torture than pleasure, sure you will encounter all sorts of people and situations throughout the night, not all of them uncomfortable and possibly hookup with a woman, who may or may not have also participated in the booze fest free for all where the two of you can go straight high school Tijuana club night on the dancefloor making out in front of everyone without a care in the world, where that might lead is probably a strong motivator for this legion of lushes to show up for the free drinks in the first place. The clock is ticking and the hive is abuzz with conversations, pick up lines, and demands for attention from the bartenders, yet soon enough the booze is cut off and just like the end of the trading day, the floor clears while the bartenders clean up the residue of the feeding frenzy while casually gathering their wits for the long hual of questions from bombed out tourists who cannot fathom why the drinks are no longer free at 2am in the morning amongst all the other propositions the primarily female bartender staff endure throughout the night. It is no secret or shock that these ladies must dress like exotic dancers, give off allure, and in the end offer service to even the most base and grossly obvious perverts who seek some private time and are as persistent as a crack junky looking to score, no street too dangerous, no comment too inappropriate.
Tonight though, I head into the nightclub around 1230am that is about the time the headlining DJ goes on, sometimes 1am, but this saves me time hanging around the early crowd that tends to consist of all the free wheeling drinkers from hour number one, the music tends to be more mainstream and behavior a bit more gross like shameful sexual orgy of pig farmers lathered in baby oil and rubbing alcohol, attacking each other with the zest of some drug possessed speed freak in leather chaps. The entire scene evokes memories of what it might have been during the time of Caligulia, though after witnessing some of the dancefloor activities on occasion, it might have made the roman hedonist go fetal. Amongst the crowd of zanies on the dancefloor is a group of people I term the Asian mafia, they are a group numbering on any given week from ten to twenty and they are always twisted on some sort of chemicals, throwing and swinging their women around on the dancefloor in some sort of primative ritualistic cult like behavior in attempt to channel some sort of ephinany like enlightenment. Most of the men have to be at least fifty and myself being nearly fourty feel like the old man in the crowd, but thankfully these guys in their dark shades have no problem bopping around on the dancefloor for hours at a time without pause as if programmed by the flow of the music, some sort of subliminal carrier signal has been supplanted within the music itself.
I like to take up residence in their area, just for the ebbing wave of relentless energy that seems to slowly possess me as the music gets better throughout the night. The plume of naroctic effluvient takes position around my senses and spirit, there is no one in this club who week in and week out look more fucked up than this clandalstine cadre of drug induced warriors, awaiting the ceremonial shaman to approach the musical alter of sacrifice where brain cells shall be lifted over heads and then cast into the fire of Parkinson's like behavior into the next couple of decades. So the mafia holds down their side of the dancefloor in a sort of impromptu role as nightclub diplomat to all the first time tourists who might be getting their initial taste of real decadent behavior, due in fact to the techno/house music, which tends to be louder, faster, and when hallucinating more sensorial and without going into another tangent of my own experience, let me just say that people begin to hear, see, and feel things that they might dismiss during their conscious hours of sobriety, but when existing in more of a dream state on the dancefloor where experience of visual, aurual, and emotional states may take on a more surrealistic nature things can come at you very fast, it will make sense at the time and for someone who is new to the experience can find it a bit rough on the sanity, almost like an intense science fiction stoner film, where any sort of reference point with reality has long gone by the wayside. I have seen it happen, losing the plot is a term people use, complete disassociation, an extended vacation that some never want to end, no stress, just blissful release of chemicals made within one's own body on command from the brain, amongst people who share in this same belief of the never ending high, a fool hearty pipe dream but for those four or five hours, as a friend of mine would say, bye bye.
The headline DJ is beginning to gather himself, he has an assistant who is in the middle of setting up this mini recording studio up on the DJ booth, beginning with an array of cables, modules, and other computer based equipment, one cannot be sure whether he is going to play music or maybe attempt to remotely launch a space shuttle from somewhere in Florida. This whole process of plugging in wires, adjusting buttons, and booting up laptop computers takes nearly a half an hour, while the DJ himself sits off to the side somewhere patiently drinking a cocktail while entertaining a myriad of people like the promoter and various hanger ons who take worship complex to entirely another level, so while this like colony of worker bees buzzes about the DJ, I sort of begin to contemplate how much longer I will stay, looks like the headliner will only play two hours, three is much better, yet everyone is different and the crowd has some input on how long a DJ will play, if they responsed well early to some of the slightly motivational tracks, which get the party started so to speak this will cue the DJ to focus more into developing the emotional flow of the night via the music, a psychological symphony or just mere sonic manipulation, regardless a more clued up crowd, meaning a dancefloor that follows dance music to the point where they know many of the tracks or at least know the flow of the DJ playing or lastly just love to dance like someone with possessed with the spirits of James Brown and Iggy Pop can take the night to another level like going from Defcon 5 to Defcon 2 and when Defcon 1 is reached make sure you place your sanity somewhere familiar, cause on that occasion when the music, clubbers, DJ, and dancefloor hit Defcon 1 time and space start to bend, hours can turn into minutes and before you know it the lights are on, it's six am with presence of a new day making its way over the eastern horizon.
The vibe as it is called, is something that develops in those who listen to dance music, a few just have a natural gravitation toward the music, fits them, no learning curve and it is not all just about the drugs, for some sure, but I know quite a few people who will just drink a soda or water throughout the night, but be dancing around as if hit with taser and tranquilizer gun simulatenously once the music picks up steam. Dance music DJ's, at least the great ones, start off with a real midlevel tempo, something to get the bodies moving, yet not some mind altering deep heavy club music that get people speaking in tongues while journeying through out of body experiences before 2am and having witnessed nights like that throughout the years, just have the medivacs, stretchers, and medics on standby, the casualities will pile up, an epidemic of hopped up cretins will take things too far if left unchecked, some shall attempt to leap out into unfamiliar boundaries they have yet to understand then get dragged into the undertoe when the waves of chemicals released from the brain get stronger and more immidiate sending them into shock, psychological shock, a clean break from reality, it can get intense when one's body starts running the show without the rational mind being allowed any input, images appear, thoughts germinate, mortal thoughts, paralysis, orgasmic like waves drowned everything else out and without the proper training in how to manuever throughout all these various states during this freak out, things can get messy. The combonation of club music, drugs, and a group of like minded people who are all participating in developing this state, this possession, or ritualistic attempt at enlightenment will get right on top of the novice who sees all this as one big barrel of fun, like doing beer bongs at high school parties. But it is not and I have seen the zombies, the paralyzed, and the OD'd fall at times right into my arms, dehydrated, ingesting narcotics they truly do not understand or even recognize, just eat the damn thing, says one friend to another, you'll love it, as they wake up at the hospital, full of IV's and stomach pumps, if they are lucky, others wake up sexually assualted, robbed, or braindead.
This is the darkside of recreational substance abuse and from someone who has spent a quarter of a century participating in such adventures, it is not always fun. Luckily, tonight the only people who seem to be in the war zone is the Asian mafia and if you took a sample of any their blood, sweat, or hair folics, I have no doubt you would instantenously start to hallucinate. Not really, much of a crowd tonight, they are trying and the DJ notices, attempts to jump start the collective shift to the next gear, but this crowd does not understand this DJ who is playing club tracks that drift more toward the heavier partiers that have internalized this housetechnoprogressive sound to the point that when the music is heard, their bodies begin to chemically react at a cellular level, you can put me in that catagory, great dance music is like a fix, an adrenline rush, a connective emotive state of existence which when place one on top of another become like building blocks ending up in a constructive architecture of happiness, other parts of the brain take over, start calling shots, cause how else can people aerobically maintain five or more hours of physical stamina, dancefloor pilates, some might say drugs are involved to maintain that energy level, but others just are carried away by the music. Not as much tonight though, a great bunch of sounds as I take a break to talk to a few friends about the Wed. night weekly becoming a thing of the past, again, as so many nights, over so many years, a place to gather in a society bent on moving at the speed of light and beyond, this stopover, this sanctuary is one of the few places where club music fans can interact with like minded people, but even more important where people who have not really experienced this scene, sound, and crowd, can have an opportunity to explore it without judgement, with encouragement from the regulars, I have watched people, unfamiliar with the club music scene, stand around, taking it in, sort of weirded out by the group of raver kids spinning their lights in fluid like movements, or the throngs of dancefloor junkies going at the dancing as if it was their last night on earth, as well as the large groups of patrons from aboard where dance club culture is well connected with the mainstream, throw in the mafia and a few other crazies, and what transpires is this circus on the edge of a riot at all times and when that right dance track at the right moment is played, total insanity will ensue, something described by Dante from his book the Inferno, the atomsphere seems unreal that all these people are letting go, feel secure with themselves, and are enjoying what life has given them, these things themselves will hook a few new people as I watch them go from ridiculing the whole scene amongst their friends to full on club mayhem arm in arm with a bunch of other loonies smiling their ass off when the music gets heavy, deep, and primitive. Dancing is primitive in its nature, tribal, a community of people coming together part spiritual, part celebratory, and all encompassing love in understanding how music connects us all.
I'm going to cut it here, all the other fun stuff happens after the club closes, work starts in five hours and I did not get home till 9am yesterday, so some spatchka, then Part 2, no editing on this one tonight, so if it is a bit sorted, just realize life inside the metropolis does not always provide time to edit ones life. See Ya
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Technology: The Drug of a Nation
Over drinks last night at a local bar I happen to strike up a conversation with the art director of the local newspaper. His tasks consisted of recieving stories, editing some of them, and then deciding on the layout of the actual text and pictures for all sections of the newspaper from the front page to the ops. I was curious about how he felt in regards to the shift into digital media from the traditional print media over the past ten years. At first he didn't feel it was too bad at least for the local newspaper, but nationally there had been quite a large amount of downsizing in the ranks of actual news writers, something like 3000 writers had been given their walking papers due in some part to the move of news information into the digital realm, even though some credit was also given to the downturn in the economy. Blogging, insert ironic humor here, has taken over the internet where people are writing about all sorts of things right as they happen, yet I jumped in with the idea that even though the immediacy of information might be great for the reader, it does not actually mean the information is accurate or truthful, kind of like wikipedia, which is to the best of my knowledge, collective information assembled by people believed to have some sort of knowledge and or authority in regards to all varied sorts of subjects.
The man gave me a news example from a meeting of his early in the day where discussion consisted of whether the front headline should be the grand opening of a local multi-billion dollar hotel project or that President Obama had just ordered 30,000 troops to be sent off to Afganistan. His arguement in the meeting centered around the idea that with the immediate nature of news via his work computer, laptop, or cellphone he could easy have heard about the troop deployment long before the ink was even dry on the next mornings paper, so why send out news that people locally have more than likely already heard, as opposed to a more locally center news piece regarding the hotel opening that will have more of a direct impact on the community with regards to employment, economic boost, and architectual praise. I understood his point, granted there is a large Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where I reside, so there is some impact from the troop deployment as well. In the end, I think he was saying that with the instantaneous nature of information in the 21st century, any large sort of national and global news shall be well recieved by the time the first newspaper hits the early morning stands.
Next, I wanted his opinion on the future of news, is the print paper format slowly becoming obsolete, will the transformation of information over the internet become the primary and possibly the only source for people to gather information, pushing past even television. I mean who really watches the national evening news anymore on any of the major networks, can you remember, before cable and satellite television, before CNN, Fox News, and E Entertainment. As a kid I can remember waiting for the 5:30pm national news with Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or Peter Jennings, these guys might have been face men or prompter readers yet they brought forth a sense of journalism as information literary works of art, no 30 second news wraps of the day, information scroll bars, and various other graphic effects that seem to clutter every single frame of all major television news sources today. Like the fantasy information in football, isn't football stressful enough, the emotional rollercoaster of watching your favorite team play on Sunday, but then to have to be distracted by the ever present scrolling of information for those crack gambling junkies who cannot get enough action by betting the games but have to send themselves into near stroke status because their receiver of the week has 1 reception for minus 7 yards.
In the end though I could sense an attitude of impending doom for the newspaper as we know it, a slow sailing off into the sunset where only icebergs await, sinking away into the depths of history, left to be about as relevant as the telegraph. Maybe the conversation depressed him a bit as he finished his drink and then got up to leave. I told him I would check out the morning paper to see his work first hand, luckily another friend of mine gets the newspaper at his house, so there was the big headline with the opening of the mega resort to end all mega resorts, the new standard going into the next millenium, this fantasy like science fiction future all done up on poster boards and 3D graphics, sitting smack dab in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, the new Death Star, the latest in decadent buildings whose importance will never have the lasting power of the pyramids, the Coliseum, or even the Effiel Tower, these buildings are the last artifacts of an era where wealth took on proportions the Roman Empire could only dream of, this oil barron funded projected, our personal cross of four dollar a gallon gas ressurected as a tribute to the most hedonistic, profit mongering whores of all time, a monument of self indulgence no drug addict could ever outperform even with an unlimited supply of drugs. Funny, though now how the rest of the strip as well as the city is in various processes of decay, with unfinished buildings and other new hotels along with the contemporary hotels who have more empty rooms than they know what to do with, which is great for the customer, but spraypainting a turd with gold, only results in a gold plated turd, no matter what fancy name you might call it.
So many others tonight, at the other local bar I hang out in, texting or just looking at their cellphone like love sick teenagers waiting for someone to call as they sit there alone with a beer sort of playing with the trackball, maybe going over emails, surfing the web, or wondering what movie to go see later, possibly even sexting, what is that, probably have to ask Tiger Woods, he could tell ya. The masses have become engrossed with cellphone culture from Facebook to instant messaging, it has become all about, "Hey, what are you doing?", other replies "Nothing", then asks "Hey, what are you doing?, other replies, "Nothing" as the spiral of steady spiritual, intellectual, and rational humanity moves further beyond sight.
For myself, the cellphone is like a home arrest ankle bracelet and a 80's doctor's pager, it's on at all times, most of my income is dirived from answering calls, making calls to others, and organizing on the various other media formats of cellphone technology, such as IM, text, and email, while working on MS Office based programs to be sent off from the above technologies.
But who can forget about the picture phone, won't even get into the ones that do video, but how many people have seen pixs of some other guys GF, spouse, etc, can't speak for the ladies but I imagine they might do the same around their girlfriends, what a watershed this technology has become, when I get the occasional stomach churning pornographic sex picture that has been forwarded at least 8000 times, hey the boob shot powerpoint slide shows are great and even finding someone else's cellphone and accidently stumbling on to some nude pics of her taken on her phone, then sending them to himself takes on a whole entirely new preverse reality to the point that sex is almost like in the novel Brave New World, so desentized, mundane, and instutionalized at such young ages that the once taboo nature of it almost seems urban legend.
Lastly tonight, moving through two seperate points in time, physicists have been stumped, Einstein woed in agony at his inability to experience such a thing, Nasa is in the dark ages compared to my recent discovery. Thanks to technology, specifically the invention of the Digital Video Recorder which can be hooked up to a cable television box to record shows of any sort to be played back at the owner's convenience one of the time streams is born, well tonight the DVR was recording a college basketball game that had been put on pause in order to take care of some last minute preperations for a small gathering which included dinner, this moment of paused motion is time phase number one. Number Two is the immediate informative nature of the Iphone, which my friend sitting next to me at the time, stews in agony in having to delay the start of the DVR version of the game, techically, the game has not started, sure the players are playing the game in reality but in the television stream they have merely taken a bit more time to shoot some more digital lay ups out in the cyberspace arena. Well my friend pulls up some Iphone application that will give him updated information about the game being played on the Iphone, time phase number two. So after another ten minutes, the television DVR version of the basketball game is unpaused, yet now behind the Iphone version as my friend sits their in an array of facial expressions mosts of them tending to be on the disgusted and dejected side. Now I can move back and forth into moments of the game from the tv to the Iphone where the same game is being played at two different points in time co-existing. Everyone else in the room is ignoring him just so they can remain somewhat in the moment with the game on the television, but my friend wears his emotions on his sleeve and more than once lowers his Iphone face down on his lap while shaking his head in disbelief, this emotion slowly carries over into the television DVR game, but by now, what does it matter, except for the idea of the two games in two different points in time, yet not having previous knowledge of the game while watching the DVR version of the game helps, my friend did not help, thankfully halftime arrived and both media streams arrived at the same point once more, maybe next time when I talk about technology I can go more in depth into the grasp it has on me in my life, but another time.
Ad Plug: Feel free to subscribe to this blog, pass it along, and or leave comments. I have 1 follower, my next goal is 2. Hopefully some writing in the future shall be released, will probably be in PDF, Kindle, and some other digital formats, self published print books cost over 30 bucks a book, so goes the paperback, the same eventual way of the vinyl record.
The man gave me a news example from a meeting of his early in the day where discussion consisted of whether the front headline should be the grand opening of a local multi-billion dollar hotel project or that President Obama had just ordered 30,000 troops to be sent off to Afganistan. His arguement in the meeting centered around the idea that with the immediate nature of news via his work computer, laptop, or cellphone he could easy have heard about the troop deployment long before the ink was even dry on the next mornings paper, so why send out news that people locally have more than likely already heard, as opposed to a more locally center news piece regarding the hotel opening that will have more of a direct impact on the community with regards to employment, economic boost, and architectual praise. I understood his point, granted there is a large Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where I reside, so there is some impact from the troop deployment as well. In the end, I think he was saying that with the instantaneous nature of information in the 21st century, any large sort of national and global news shall be well recieved by the time the first newspaper hits the early morning stands.
Next, I wanted his opinion on the future of news, is the print paper format slowly becoming obsolete, will the transformation of information over the internet become the primary and possibly the only source for people to gather information, pushing past even television. I mean who really watches the national evening news anymore on any of the major networks, can you remember, before cable and satellite television, before CNN, Fox News, and E Entertainment. As a kid I can remember waiting for the 5:30pm national news with Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or Peter Jennings, these guys might have been face men or prompter readers yet they brought forth a sense of journalism as information literary works of art, no 30 second news wraps of the day, information scroll bars, and various other graphic effects that seem to clutter every single frame of all major television news sources today. Like the fantasy information in football, isn't football stressful enough, the emotional rollercoaster of watching your favorite team play on Sunday, but then to have to be distracted by the ever present scrolling of information for those crack gambling junkies who cannot get enough action by betting the games but have to send themselves into near stroke status because their receiver of the week has 1 reception for minus 7 yards.
In the end though I could sense an attitude of impending doom for the newspaper as we know it, a slow sailing off into the sunset where only icebergs await, sinking away into the depths of history, left to be about as relevant as the telegraph. Maybe the conversation depressed him a bit as he finished his drink and then got up to leave. I told him I would check out the morning paper to see his work first hand, luckily another friend of mine gets the newspaper at his house, so there was the big headline with the opening of the mega resort to end all mega resorts, the new standard going into the next millenium, this fantasy like science fiction future all done up on poster boards and 3D graphics, sitting smack dab in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, the new Death Star, the latest in decadent buildings whose importance will never have the lasting power of the pyramids, the Coliseum, or even the Effiel Tower, these buildings are the last artifacts of an era where wealth took on proportions the Roman Empire could only dream of, this oil barron funded projected, our personal cross of four dollar a gallon gas ressurected as a tribute to the most hedonistic, profit mongering whores of all time, a monument of self indulgence no drug addict could ever outperform even with an unlimited supply of drugs. Funny, though now how the rest of the strip as well as the city is in various processes of decay, with unfinished buildings and other new hotels along with the contemporary hotels who have more empty rooms than they know what to do with, which is great for the customer, but spraypainting a turd with gold, only results in a gold plated turd, no matter what fancy name you might call it.
So many others tonight, at the other local bar I hang out in, texting or just looking at their cellphone like love sick teenagers waiting for someone to call as they sit there alone with a beer sort of playing with the trackball, maybe going over emails, surfing the web, or wondering what movie to go see later, possibly even sexting, what is that, probably have to ask Tiger Woods, he could tell ya. The masses have become engrossed with cellphone culture from Facebook to instant messaging, it has become all about, "Hey, what are you doing?", other replies "Nothing", then asks "Hey, what are you doing?, other replies, "Nothing" as the spiral of steady spiritual, intellectual, and rational humanity moves further beyond sight.
For myself, the cellphone is like a home arrest ankle bracelet and a 80's doctor's pager, it's on at all times, most of my income is dirived from answering calls, making calls to others, and organizing on the various other media formats of cellphone technology, such as IM, text, and email, while working on MS Office based programs to be sent off from the above technologies.
But who can forget about the picture phone, won't even get into the ones that do video, but how many people have seen pixs of some other guys GF, spouse, etc, can't speak for the ladies but I imagine they might do the same around their girlfriends, what a watershed this technology has become, when I get the occasional stomach churning pornographic sex picture that has been forwarded at least 8000 times, hey the boob shot powerpoint slide shows are great and even finding someone else's cellphone and accidently stumbling on to some nude pics of her taken on her phone, then sending them to himself takes on a whole entirely new preverse reality to the point that sex is almost like in the novel Brave New World, so desentized, mundane, and instutionalized at such young ages that the once taboo nature of it almost seems urban legend.
Lastly tonight, moving through two seperate points in time, physicists have been stumped, Einstein woed in agony at his inability to experience such a thing, Nasa is in the dark ages compared to my recent discovery. Thanks to technology, specifically the invention of the Digital Video Recorder which can be hooked up to a cable television box to record shows of any sort to be played back at the owner's convenience one of the time streams is born, well tonight the DVR was recording a college basketball game that had been put on pause in order to take care of some last minute preperations for a small gathering which included dinner, this moment of paused motion is time phase number one. Number Two is the immediate informative nature of the Iphone, which my friend sitting next to me at the time, stews in agony in having to delay the start of the DVR version of the game, techically, the game has not started, sure the players are playing the game in reality but in the television stream they have merely taken a bit more time to shoot some more digital lay ups out in the cyberspace arena. Well my friend pulls up some Iphone application that will give him updated information about the game being played on the Iphone, time phase number two. So after another ten minutes, the television DVR version of the basketball game is unpaused, yet now behind the Iphone version as my friend sits their in an array of facial expressions mosts of them tending to be on the disgusted and dejected side. Now I can move back and forth into moments of the game from the tv to the Iphone where the same game is being played at two different points in time co-existing. Everyone else in the room is ignoring him just so they can remain somewhat in the moment with the game on the television, but my friend wears his emotions on his sleeve and more than once lowers his Iphone face down on his lap while shaking his head in disbelief, this emotion slowly carries over into the television DVR game, but by now, what does it matter, except for the idea of the two games in two different points in time, yet not having previous knowledge of the game while watching the DVR version of the game helps, my friend did not help, thankfully halftime arrived and both media streams arrived at the same point once more, maybe next time when I talk about technology I can go more in depth into the grasp it has on me in my life, but another time.
Ad Plug: Feel free to subscribe to this blog, pass it along, and or leave comments. I have 1 follower, my next goal is 2. Hopefully some writing in the future shall be released, will probably be in PDF, Kindle, and some other digital formats, self published print books cost over 30 bucks a book, so goes the paperback, the same eventual way of the vinyl record.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Two for Tuesday
Second installment and just like that low growly voice of any american classic rock dj, there might have been a time in my youth when I looked forward to that particular day, Tuesday, where I got to (in stoned out barbituate dialect introduction by the DJ) hear a couple songs of the complex sounds of Rush, then on would come that intro guitar riff for Limelight and I almost felt ripped off, shit I could hear that song anytime on most FM stations during the early eighties, maybe the two for tuesday thing started in the seventies, so down the quaaludes and be sent off to the bombastic rock free for all of Led Zeppelin, but after getting disinterested in Limelight with not much else to do in my room considering, I had found a way to get restricted to my room for the entire summer by stealing money from my mom and having some friends over who went about drinking all my mother and stepfathers alcohol, as the cat trashed all the liquor bottles off the table onto the ground as one friend tried to swing it by its tail, peer pressure is such a bitch, just like getting high for the first time, hanging with the cool stoner kids in seventh grade as they push some low grade metal pipe full of shake into your face, come on, just put your lips on the pipe and suck in, I will light it, while standing in the infamous court 10 of the racquetball courts, why we had 10 raquetball courts in junior high who knows, maybe just school in a nice area, I did not live there, had to take the bus every morning fifteen miles to go there, then back home, or wait for my mom to pick me up so she could yell at me about how shitty having to go to work and dealing with the entire human race she could not stand in the first place, which sent her straight to the bottle every single day she got home, I knew the married life long before falling into that trap, but much earlier in my private castle tower I remained prisoner, far away from all my friends outside throwing rocks at my window, giving me the finger, and laughing at my general state of being in lock down mode. Limelight ends and on comes something more worthwhile, a song to really marvel at, I was amazed at how three expressionate musicans could sound like a damn symphony, not that I had a grasp of classical music, but something that sent me into a dream like state, the song Red Barchetta was a virtual musical imagination video like song.
Music helped passed this particular summer, had no need for sports, my parents did want to pay for them, so I'd go play pick up games with the little league teams of my friends while their parents marveled at my athletic talents, what did it matter. I use get my ass kicked by sixteen year olds when I was eight, then go shoot up the neighborhood with those same kids using BB Guns to terrorize the children down the block.
I spent a lot of time in trouble, maybe just I was too stupid to know any better or having been given so much freedom to come and go by the time I was five, by the time I was twelve it felt as if I had no parents at all, except for the fact that they were legally bound to look after my welfare. Yet music, this strange companion, confidant, and the only thing in the world that seems to empathize with all the complex emotions swirling through my head became the only guidance I ever really needed, rebellion, hate, information, sex, beauty, loss, heartbreak, dispair, as well as the demonstration of the out right willling enslavement by the citizens of this country for an orgasm, a drug fix, a fine wine, food, or ancient civilization across the globe and who can forget family, isn't that the great one, I have to do this for my family, load myself up with shit I don't need, stay together with someone I can no longer live with, creating an invisible prison that wares on you like hurricane force tides on jagged edge rocks that over time become smooth and faded.
Music has never let me down, musicians, concerts, sure, expectations run higher on human performance than on that now piece of digital music on MP3 players, a time when having less meant more, when the bar for accumulation of senseless objects and commodities was at ground level, now I have so much shit I don't need that setting fire to the lot of it feels like the only rational thing left to do. Whether it was the Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, NWA, Nirvana, King Tubby, Zappa, Sun Ra, The Beach Boys, or the Stones, those invisible but audible voices, guitars, and musical instruments made me feel safe, joyful, alive, and at times ready to burn the whole shit house down. Even today listening recently to the likes of Dylan and Santana just reaffirms my belief in the healing power of music, yes my followers, you too can exorcise the demons of high interest, unemployment, binge habits, and the embracing of bland mediocre culture, just put this Stooges album on or maybe Pink Floyd and for the truly daring turn up some Ennio Morricone, if you have seen the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly than you already know his work, right up their with Nino Rota (Sp?) who did the early Godfather soundtracks, enough of the music on to the people.
After the triumph kickoff of my foray into the digital goo, it was time to go get a drink down at the local pub, fairly nondescript, except for a couple particular customers across on the other side of this horseshoe shaped bar, let me preface by saying I had just returned from three days in NYC which is like in any other place comparable to a month, so after hunkering down in a few midtown bars where the patrons were so individualistic, fascinating, talkative, and cool as hell, my mind was sort of undergoing a slow depression as well as rapid deacceleration, I took time to reflect on a conversation with an Italian man from Rome who was living in New York now, convo began over soccer, then crossed over into his travels to and from his homecountry, as he had lived in NYC for now over 15 years, heading back only recently to see family. He described how he used to walk the same Rome streets so long ago and never acknowledged their beauty, their history, and value while heading into work, day after day, only as a visitor did he retrace his steps and marvel at the wonders of the archetectual history surrounding him on all sides, completely mind blown, he said he just sat there for hours looking, reflecting, astonished at his lack of observation so long ago. Found out he was a painter, after a couple of Jagers and beers, then looked down to see four bags full of all sorts of paint cans, large white Sherman Williams bags taking up nearly half of the floor space in the bar, sure as hell did not see him, as he made his way out, offering me a place to stay the next time I came back to Manhattan.
Also had a brief chat with the female bartender, who was attractive and come to find out she had just graduated NYU film school, a place I obsessed over as a teenager, in my full blown film/art craze, this was the place Scorsese and Stone amongst other filmmakers popped in for talks. The main point in NYC is I feel more like myself at least the self I would like to project more often if it did not make others uncomfortable for whatever reason, so now to last night.
Two guys and one woman, the woman is your standard Vegas blonde probably flirting with her early thirties, has a boob job, has either stripped, cocktailed, or played human sex toy. She is wearing a forest green shirt that says " I don't make mistakes; I date them", which by the looks of her it seems very plausable especially when you see the guy she had shown up with. Typical LA. Vegas type, has been on the Creatine shakes for many years or steriods, bulked up Affliction/Ed Hardy type of shirt, arms covered in tattoos, puffed up like a male pigeon in heat, sporting the spikey hair cut with sideburns, at least it was not a mohawk. They have a friend who is also of the same musclehead overpriced clothing tattoo mode, sort of a third wheel of the bunch, yet there seemed to be some sort of latent homoerotic thing going on with them, maybe it was the vain masculinity. The woman was playing video poker, the posterchild of the braindead in this city, not quite as bad as television, there are free drinks and a chance at some money, but lot of quiet types go for that stuff, and speaking of quiet there is this brother sort of hanging by himself, lost in his own thoughts, playing and singing along to the nineties music echoing through the pub, this kat looks deep as he has not said a word in the past two hours, just sort of dreaming, pondering, maybe wondering about what I am observing at the moment, yet somehow if I have an audience, I think this guy would be part of it.
Anyway there is a new female bartendar tonight, she is attractive, boob job, cute face, no ass, but rather shapely, so as the bartendar comes over to ask the cool trio for another round, they order and as she leaves the third wheel starts in on her flat ass and big nose, talking to his butt buddy, saying how she's okay but a bit nasty, of course the blonde adds her two sense in sexual prowess jealousy by adding how she is nothing but a little ho bag in a plaid skirt shaking her tits for tips, the very antithesis of their west coast flare. Yet the third wheel starts up a conversation with the female bartender anyway, as if to prove that he could get her if he wanted to, while attempting to subtly degrade her at the same, for she will be too dense to get it. I get caught up in sports highlights from the media dept that will never let up. Look at old Tiger Woods, once the poster child of sports, period, drives his car into a telephone pole and now he is an alleged spouse abusers and philanderer, as the news broke it seemed that Woods might have been dead like Paul McCartney back in the sixties, stone dead. All those advertisers pucker assholes across the globe, one of the biggest cash cows on the planet, drops dead, investors go into panic mode, PGA tour is canceled, all because of instant yet not always accurate media. Woods is officially no longer a human being, he is an investment and a commodity, this kind of behavior, alleged, is only given to special people like actors, rock stars, and politicians. Ol Tiger has to be Fortune 50, maybe higher, too many retirements, young hot pussy, and party business trips on the line for Mr. Woods to be stepping out, I am sure the authorities were not the first ones to greet him at the hospital, it probably was a group of suits and muscle offering the proverbial slap on the wrist, ending with a bone clenching grasp, this is it, back to work, or you can caddie down at the local muni course.
Back to the hipsters, well third wheel is having no success which has him resorting to calling her all sort of nasty things, a last gasp of the no gaming having loser, so the bartender starts talking to me, as I tell her what I do for a living, the conversation is forced which always makes me uncomfortable, rather not talk than pretend to have something to say, have to do that at work enough as it is, she starts telling me about a patron who tried following her home one night and how she had to call her ex-boyfriend who did not confront the guy figuring him as a pussy as well, anyway she just moved into town about a year ago, fresh meat, no wonder she did not seem as jaded as the blonde with the shirt sitting on the other side that woman was rode hard and put away wet, pure evil, looking for a way up or out or something to make her feel younger than her features indicated. I was really trying to leave by now, go home, but who can turn down a free beer, so I stuck around, as a couple more members of the west coast posse rolled in, the guy standard issue,the woman with trucker cap casually slid to the side of her head dressed in bmx brand clothing, so the girls go play darts and the guys start in on the bartender again, she ignores them completely, which leaves them to fag off with themselves, one guy is pretending to blow the other guy, the bartender replies, I was right, pegging them for gay or whatever, they had a good laugh when one of them put one of the other guys phone number on the chalkboard in the mens bathroom with the old call for a blowjob routine, they were all rolling on the floor. On my fifth beer, the volume gets turned down as the bartender talks about leaving, more than once, with me, not sure, doubtful, but she starts nesting on my side of the bar, it gets uncomfortable especially with all the stalker talk earlier, time to bail, get away from this three ring circus on a Monday night.
Music helped passed this particular summer, had no need for sports, my parents did want to pay for them, so I'd go play pick up games with the little league teams of my friends while their parents marveled at my athletic talents, what did it matter. I use get my ass kicked by sixteen year olds when I was eight, then go shoot up the neighborhood with those same kids using BB Guns to terrorize the children down the block.
I spent a lot of time in trouble, maybe just I was too stupid to know any better or having been given so much freedom to come and go by the time I was five, by the time I was twelve it felt as if I had no parents at all, except for the fact that they were legally bound to look after my welfare. Yet music, this strange companion, confidant, and the only thing in the world that seems to empathize with all the complex emotions swirling through my head became the only guidance I ever really needed, rebellion, hate, information, sex, beauty, loss, heartbreak, dispair, as well as the demonstration of the out right willling enslavement by the citizens of this country for an orgasm, a drug fix, a fine wine, food, or ancient civilization across the globe and who can forget family, isn't that the great one, I have to do this for my family, load myself up with shit I don't need, stay together with someone I can no longer live with, creating an invisible prison that wares on you like hurricane force tides on jagged edge rocks that over time become smooth and faded.
Music has never let me down, musicians, concerts, sure, expectations run higher on human performance than on that now piece of digital music on MP3 players, a time when having less meant more, when the bar for accumulation of senseless objects and commodities was at ground level, now I have so much shit I don't need that setting fire to the lot of it feels like the only rational thing left to do. Whether it was the Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, NWA, Nirvana, King Tubby, Zappa, Sun Ra, The Beach Boys, or the Stones, those invisible but audible voices, guitars, and musical instruments made me feel safe, joyful, alive, and at times ready to burn the whole shit house down. Even today listening recently to the likes of Dylan and Santana just reaffirms my belief in the healing power of music, yes my followers, you too can exorcise the demons of high interest, unemployment, binge habits, and the embracing of bland mediocre culture, just put this Stooges album on or maybe Pink Floyd and for the truly daring turn up some Ennio Morricone, if you have seen the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly than you already know his work, right up their with Nino Rota (Sp?) who did the early Godfather soundtracks, enough of the music on to the people.
After the triumph kickoff of my foray into the digital goo, it was time to go get a drink down at the local pub, fairly nondescript, except for a couple particular customers across on the other side of this horseshoe shaped bar, let me preface by saying I had just returned from three days in NYC which is like in any other place comparable to a month, so after hunkering down in a few midtown bars where the patrons were so individualistic, fascinating, talkative, and cool as hell, my mind was sort of undergoing a slow depression as well as rapid deacceleration, I took time to reflect on a conversation with an Italian man from Rome who was living in New York now, convo began over soccer, then crossed over into his travels to and from his homecountry, as he had lived in NYC for now over 15 years, heading back only recently to see family. He described how he used to walk the same Rome streets so long ago and never acknowledged their beauty, their history, and value while heading into work, day after day, only as a visitor did he retrace his steps and marvel at the wonders of the archetectual history surrounding him on all sides, completely mind blown, he said he just sat there for hours looking, reflecting, astonished at his lack of observation so long ago. Found out he was a painter, after a couple of Jagers and beers, then looked down to see four bags full of all sorts of paint cans, large white Sherman Williams bags taking up nearly half of the floor space in the bar, sure as hell did not see him, as he made his way out, offering me a place to stay the next time I came back to Manhattan.
Also had a brief chat with the female bartender, who was attractive and come to find out she had just graduated NYU film school, a place I obsessed over as a teenager, in my full blown film/art craze, this was the place Scorsese and Stone amongst other filmmakers popped in for talks. The main point in NYC is I feel more like myself at least the self I would like to project more often if it did not make others uncomfortable for whatever reason, so now to last night.
Two guys and one woman, the woman is your standard Vegas blonde probably flirting with her early thirties, has a boob job, has either stripped, cocktailed, or played human sex toy. She is wearing a forest green shirt that says " I don't make mistakes; I date them", which by the looks of her it seems very plausable especially when you see the guy she had shown up with. Typical LA. Vegas type, has been on the Creatine shakes for many years or steriods, bulked up Affliction/Ed Hardy type of shirt, arms covered in tattoos, puffed up like a male pigeon in heat, sporting the spikey hair cut with sideburns, at least it was not a mohawk. They have a friend who is also of the same musclehead overpriced clothing tattoo mode, sort of a third wheel of the bunch, yet there seemed to be some sort of latent homoerotic thing going on with them, maybe it was the vain masculinity. The woman was playing video poker, the posterchild of the braindead in this city, not quite as bad as television, there are free drinks and a chance at some money, but lot of quiet types go for that stuff, and speaking of quiet there is this brother sort of hanging by himself, lost in his own thoughts, playing and singing along to the nineties music echoing through the pub, this kat looks deep as he has not said a word in the past two hours, just sort of dreaming, pondering, maybe wondering about what I am observing at the moment, yet somehow if I have an audience, I think this guy would be part of it.
Anyway there is a new female bartendar tonight, she is attractive, boob job, cute face, no ass, but rather shapely, so as the bartendar comes over to ask the cool trio for another round, they order and as she leaves the third wheel starts in on her flat ass and big nose, talking to his butt buddy, saying how she's okay but a bit nasty, of course the blonde adds her two sense in sexual prowess jealousy by adding how she is nothing but a little ho bag in a plaid skirt shaking her tits for tips, the very antithesis of their west coast flare. Yet the third wheel starts up a conversation with the female bartender anyway, as if to prove that he could get her if he wanted to, while attempting to subtly degrade her at the same, for she will be too dense to get it. I get caught up in sports highlights from the media dept that will never let up. Look at old Tiger Woods, once the poster child of sports, period, drives his car into a telephone pole and now he is an alleged spouse abusers and philanderer, as the news broke it seemed that Woods might have been dead like Paul McCartney back in the sixties, stone dead. All those advertisers pucker assholes across the globe, one of the biggest cash cows on the planet, drops dead, investors go into panic mode, PGA tour is canceled, all because of instant yet not always accurate media. Woods is officially no longer a human being, he is an investment and a commodity, this kind of behavior, alleged, is only given to special people like actors, rock stars, and politicians. Ol Tiger has to be Fortune 50, maybe higher, too many retirements, young hot pussy, and party business trips on the line for Mr. Woods to be stepping out, I am sure the authorities were not the first ones to greet him at the hospital, it probably was a group of suits and muscle offering the proverbial slap on the wrist, ending with a bone clenching grasp, this is it, back to work, or you can caddie down at the local muni course.
Back to the hipsters, well third wheel is having no success which has him resorting to calling her all sort of nasty things, a last gasp of the no gaming having loser, so the bartender starts talking to me, as I tell her what I do for a living, the conversation is forced which always makes me uncomfortable, rather not talk than pretend to have something to say, have to do that at work enough as it is, she starts telling me about a patron who tried following her home one night and how she had to call her ex-boyfriend who did not confront the guy figuring him as a pussy as well, anyway she just moved into town about a year ago, fresh meat, no wonder she did not seem as jaded as the blonde with the shirt sitting on the other side that woman was rode hard and put away wet, pure evil, looking for a way up or out or something to make her feel younger than her features indicated. I was really trying to leave by now, go home, but who can turn down a free beer, so I stuck around, as a couple more members of the west coast posse rolled in, the guy standard issue,the woman with trucker cap casually slid to the side of her head dressed in bmx brand clothing, so the girls go play darts and the guys start in on the bartender again, she ignores them completely, which leaves them to fag off with themselves, one guy is pretending to blow the other guy, the bartender replies, I was right, pegging them for gay or whatever, they had a good laugh when one of them put one of the other guys phone number on the chalkboard in the mens bathroom with the old call for a blowjob routine, they were all rolling on the floor. On my fifth beer, the volume gets turned down as the bartender talks about leaving, more than once, with me, not sure, doubtful, but she starts nesting on my side of the bar, it gets uncomfortable especially with all the stalker talk earlier, time to bail, get away from this three ring circus on a Monday night.
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