Blue October

I worked another show tonight.

I remember seeing Blue October when they were playing the duck pond at UNM. I remember they played there an awful lot. And despite all of the criticisms shared among Jake Tittmann and me between classes, this band still “made-it”.

But what does “making it” even mean with bands?

I work these shows at Sunshine, I get to see the bands pre and post-show, and… I see the fans they have to deal with.

There is a distinct boundary between each fan-demographic, from show to show. After tonight, I’m not sure I’d ever want to be Blue-October.  I also realize that I’m not sure Blue October wants to be Blue October either.

I remember working at the radio station (103.3 The Zone! FM). We used to do these things called “sound check parties” where a group of listeners were entitled to show up early enough at a show to watch the band “sound check” some special songs for a select group of “contest winners”.

Apparently another pop-rock FM radio station called “The Peak” did the same thing for this Blue October show, only the singer and the band didn’t appear to like doing it at all. They douched around playing whatever they felt like, including a half-assed cover of the oldies classic “Blue Moon” while the singer kept his back to the “winning crowd” of 20-or-so gawking radio contest winners.

It was sad, but reasonable, because…what would I do in that situation? Clearly, being a one or two-hit band means performing a lot of mini-concerts like that to “contest winners” who see you, not as a human performer, but a prize that was won for a “rare exclusive group” of “lucky” people.

Admittedly, I have certain aspirations for a rockstar-like status. But it is strictly (I hope) for reasons that isn’t a stigma to being a “rockstar”. So seeing this kind of stuff makes me want to re-evaluate what it entails to be a popular musician at all.

Of course, it all depends on the demographic. Clearly these guys felt that being a simple pop-rock band was the answer. But when a group of these fans (drunk, asinine human-beings) howl nonsense from the stage and drown out a piano/pizzicato violin solo that took you years to master, have you ever questioned what-the-hell-happened along the way?

The answer is compromise. The universe smells it on your band, and so shall ye receive its due audience.

My Car Keeps One Tire In Purgatory

If you want the definition of procrastination, you can see a solid example of it by examining the history of my car and its problems.

The last time I worked on my car was circa January 11th. But now that the weather is heating up to unbearable window-sealed levels, I’ve been forced to fix my driver’s side window ASAP.

Today I drove it to Josh’s work where he enjoys his career as an airplane mechanic. He offered to use his airplane-fixing tools to work on my faulty window regulator. Interestingly, while on the way to the airport, my car broke down 20 feet from our intended parking spot due to a completely unrelated radiator problem. So as of today, I can’t drive 1 mile without the engine overheating.

Thankfully, however, my window is now able to roll all the way up and all the way down, completely.

Tom’s Wrist Slash

Coma was supposed to have band practice today. For whatever reason, practice was canceled, so Tommy and I talked about meeting up to jam anyway. Soon after the conversation, the outside temperature dropped 10 degrees, and it starting raining. So I said “Maybe we be jammin’ another day”.

Later, I got a call from Tommy urgently needing assistance because he slipped while chopping open some coconuts at his house. I collected gauze and other bandage material and drove over to his house.

The wound looked like a mouth had formed where his thumb meets his wrist, carrying a lazy expression of slightly parted lips. The mouth drooled red fluid, and by the time I got there it was mostly done drooling and spitting, so long as Tommy kept the mouth closed.

The whole thing was quite the bummer considering that if we had band practice or if I decided to jam, the coconut knife-slip never would have happened. Plus Tommy could have comfortably gone to yoga without any fears of wounds opening up during down-dogs and side-planks.

The story is that after 3 hours in the waiting room, the doctor finally began to look at the wound, tied a mask on to take a closer look, and blood shot straight out.

While Tommy was semi-irritated about the incident for short-term reasons, I’ve been thinking about the unfortunate location of the wound, and the eyes that will draw conclusions when seeing Tommy’s scar for the first time.

Money, 11:11, Earth Chakras, And Stuff.

Do you ever get so busy but you are clearly only spinning your wheels in one place?

I feel like I’m making so much use of my time lately. Unfortunately I’m making use of it in a million places.

You want to know a secret about me?

Of course, only if it relates to you, but if you’ve come this far to be on ibelieveinhumans.com, there’s got to be something to relate to me about.

I run in a circle from Art, The Human Condition, Metaphysical Ideas, Self-Analysis, and Money Money Money.

Money has ways of creating freedom for exploring the other four. Unfortunately when you have a brain that is wired to be interested in those first four things, it sort of runs out of room for the wirings of the Business-Mind.

I’ve had moderate success in my life with money. But I am by far in the worst position I’ve ever been in, financially.

So today I resorted to looking at the one last stock I’m invested in to see about, you know, cashing out.

11:11 taunts me. I planned on writing everything that I experience relating to that number. Some of it is super personal. Most of it is insanely synchronistic. Other times its just me seeking meaning within the banality of reality.

I tried to explain 11:11 to Tommy at some mini-party he had at his house. Then I realized that he was trying to be convinced of my theory through all of my wine-soaked slurring.

On 11:11 days (for example, July 11, 2009: numerology makes this July 11 2+0+0+9 = 11, 11:11), I wake up to a text message from somebody at 11:11 a.m. When I find that person later, he mentions that he also sees the clock at the most random moments reading “11:11″, while I’ve only listened and minimally ever hinted at looking at the clock at that time.

The entire day happens like clockwork, there’s a sense of being locked into something. Deep connections that I have with people can sort of come out on those days… meaning a sort of semi-psychic connection/experience. The very thought of a person can have them calling your phone. There’s a wave that if you let take you away, precognitions unfold. And most every conversation I have on those days are rooted in, “It’s so funny that you mentioned that, because I just heard the same thing from blah blah blah blah…”

I had a girl from Finland write me recently about experiencing the same thing, having found my blog talking about 11:11. Here’s another thing that’s interesting if you allow me to crack open a semi-hippy part of your brain (could be a good thing)…

There is a theory that the Earth, just like the human body in acupuncture, has meridian points, a.k.a., energy vortex points. Very significant things on these energy points happen on the planet, for example Glastonbury, England is known for its paranormal activity, ufo sightings, and unique crop circle phenomena. Another point is located on the sacred site of the Egyptian Pyramids. Others are highly geologically active, such as the volcanoes in Hawaii.

If you look at the photo, the chakra points are joined by “ley artery” lines which carry an energetic flow from one energy center to the next. Interestingly, there’s one that is in Northern California, passes through Sedona, AZ (A well-known “vortex point”), through New Mexico. The other ley line carries through eventually very close to Helsinki, Finland.

11:11 seems to always relate to a what-is-reality type question. When I first read this article about the Hadron Particle Collider (creates black holes, could destroy our very existence, etc. Read it, you might see how crazy this particle collider really is).  So, I sent it to three friends through email. I went back to it, and looked at the date it was written: November, 11 2009… 11/11.

I went back to the email… Sent Time, 11:11 p.m.

I’d be curious to find out how synchronicities relate to planetary location. Post a comment if this is not just hippy bollocks to you anymore, and say where you’re from.

The Dead Weather

Finally, a Sunshine show I was stoked to see.

I didn’t go to Coachella after all. Of course, William let me know about how enlightening, inspiring, and beautiful the 3-day festival was. I tried to ignore the fact that I spent most of the weekend focusing on non-enlightening things. I also got a temp staging job setting up lighting rigs, unloading ungodily heavy equipment from a truck.

The Dead Weather is Jack White’s newest project with chanteur de femme exquis, Allison Mosshart of the kills; Guitarist/keyboardist of Queens of the Stoneage; Eccentrically fat-toned bassist of the Raconteurs.

The best part was the sound check, involving them practicing jams from the new record, plus not-yet-recorded jams.

And just because I’m pompous and music-righteous, I’d like to add that this is the first show where I didn’t have to deal with the low-intelligent results of drunk humans who spew fluids from both ends, putting the cherry on the top of their night, as well as mine. So, my egotisticality likes to point out the inverse relationship to the amounts of bodily evacuations with the level of intelligence to be found in the demographic, and hence, the intelligence of the music.

Cheerio, mates!

Riley Guy Video Shoot

Over the last five days, I’ve been using Dustin’s house to shoot a music video for Will’s solo electro project called Riley Guy.

Day 1 was simple because I only needed to take photos of a series of eyes and mouth positions at the park with Will and Allison.

Day 2 was by far the biggest headache. I hadn’t planned so much of what kind of props and set we would be using, only the visual tricks I wanted to pull off.

Day 3, we began to hit a little more of a stride.

Day 4, we got nothing done as Will’s body gave up while his liver was trying to process half a fifth of rum.

Day 5… I hope to St. Pete that we got enough footage.

So now editing begins. I haven’t looked yet, but I think it will involve going through 1,500-2,000 photographs (it’s a stop motion video), which actually isn’t too bad, considering that normally every video is between 24-30 frames per second; 1,800 frames/minute.

I’m also thinking I need to go to Coachella. Tickets are sold out, and they’re selling circa $700 on ebay right now. Where do these kids get the money? I hope to get mine for $150. Crossing proverbial fingers…

Mortuaries and Film Sets

So the last couple of weeks have been wild and exciting.

Here it goes.

I finally landed a job interview at a place that agreed to pay decently for design/video work.  I went through a couple interview sessions, graduating along until I was neck ‘n neck with one other person for the spot. Long story short, I didn’t get the job. But that’s okay, because the interview process made me realize that my true life-dreams can happen apart from working there; a mortuary.

“Graphic design and video work at a mortuary? Where death, sorrow, and sad families reside twenty-four seven?!,” you ask.

Yes. The job requirements involved the following:

• Designing memorial cards with photos of the deceased
• Help design marketing materials for billboards
• Video tape/edit memorial services

I didn’t know there was a market for such things, specifically creating DVDs of funerals.

Sidenote: I feel unusually careful about using usual dry/dark remarks about this situation, because the people who interviewed me seemed like rad down-to-earth people, and I risk this blog being discovered. How? They asked me for the URLs of sites I created.

I’d like to keep it real, however. Allow me to proceed with as much tact as possible.

A sad, yet rather pleasant, truth is, I’ve never been to a funeral service. I have a good-size extended family, and in all my 27 years, I’ve only had one family death; my Mom’s dad, when I was 8. My life has been relatively free of tragedy. It’s quite a thing to be grateful for. The strange irony is this: In the past I’ve been surrounded by dead bodies in the school cadaver lab, handling entrails and dismembered limbs, even a severed head cut straight down the middle like a cantaloupe, all for the sake of art.

It’s not that I don’t have death experience, just a lack of funeral experience. So, the job requirements were going to be quite a new adventure for me. I would have had to get used to consulting families about which super-hero should be photoshopped onto their deceased child’s memorial program. While I was up for it, because hey-it-was-a-job, the interviewers must have smelled something on me that revealed I was a little bit more interested in an autonomous approach to creative endeavors.

They used an interview technique to dig out my true values. So it was like psycho-therapy. At least that’s how I imagine successful psychotherapy to be; a system of questions that require you to look at the answers you already have for yourself. They pulled out what I really want to be doing in five years, and absolutely none of it had to do with working a 9-to-5 job in the funeral industry.

The day I got the email that said they gave the job to the other guy, I was as accepting as a Hindu monk. I contemplated the 5-year question, and started to obsessively write down some goals for myself. Immediately I began to see action-packed results and take steps toward the new groove. This was in complete opposition to the familiar, “I need job now, so I go git one.” Instead, it was “I am going to get a job THERE.”

As of now, I don’t have a steady job. Still work at the concert venue sometimes. But… more recently, as Albuquerque is gradually becoming a little Hollywood, I got to work on set for a day as an extra for a T.V. show. Coincidentally, I was also invited to a party with the cast/crew of the same show. Despite the new-guy awkwardness that happens in these situations, the whole experience and unfolding of events was an eye opener. And it all has to do with this little quote I discovered:

Fifty percent of the battle ends when you make up your mind.

Jamming with the Alien Baby

Tonight I jammed with Joel and his new/temporary side project, Holy Shit! Alien Baby.

It consists of musicians who practice, and who don’t, who decide to rehearse, or who decide to just plain ol’ hop onstage on impulse during shows.

Joel told me about it, as they are playing during Flood The Sun’s last two shows before he moves to Los Angeles with his lady, Ashley.

I came up with the brilliant idea to bring my saxophone to practice and play through this harmonizer called a voice box to see if I’d be down to play a show with them, reverting to my unfledged high-school roots as a jazz saxophonist.

Joel is rather more fledged than I, and it was the first time I got to see him put the sexy vibes through my not-so-sexy student alto horn. We missed each other by one year from being in the same jazz band class. Too bad, so sad.

They play two shows. I didn’t know there was one so soon, so I’m bailing on tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll play the next show, just maybe… that is, if my 10-years-out-of-practice mouth, and ego, can handle it.

There’s a load of vomit, and we’re all out of shovels.

My mom once told me that my Grandpa was trying to become a boxer until the traumatic day he punched an opponent in the stomach, causing him to vomit spaghetti all over the place.

The story was told to me when I was probably 8 years old, but it came back to my memory with such vivid splendor tonight as I was told to clean up a full stomachs-worth of spaghetti on the balcony at Sunshine Theater.

The smell of stomach acid, although consistent in aroma from person to person, is a smell that I’ll never get used to. This wasn’t a simple pile to be sopped up by a mop and bucket, but a series of massive splashes that started on a table top, slapped to the floor, and lubricated the foot steps that had trafficked through it, leaving a slippery 10-foot radius of fun and fragrance.

Tonight would have been the first night working at Sunshine that I didn’t have to deal with bodily ejections, and I almost got away with it.

Sidenote: Killswitch Engage played. I care about that kind of music as much as I care about seeing McDonald’s on roadtrips… but the drums sounded super good.

C’est la vie

I took a massive break. One can only type tales about oneself so much.

I’m feeling a shift in priorities. But hopefully that will bring better future blog content.